Страница - 164Страница - 166- There was a Hindoo maiden once on India's coral strand
- Who had some forty suitors for her coffee-colored hand.
- Her father was a Brahmin of aristocratic caste
- Who much internal revenue in dry goods had amassed.
- These lovers thought it would be nice the dusky maid to wed,
- And spend the rupees lavishly when her papa was dead.
- But she turned up her nose at them—a very pretty pug—
- Because clandestinely she loved an elegant young Thug.
- This Thug, in his profession, was a very active man;
- He strangled eighty men the year to practice he began.
- But as the maiden's father had no taste for art at all,
- He foolishly disliked the Thug, and wouldn't let him call.
- And then she loved him better still, as always is the case,
- And so she met him daily at a certain trysting-place.
- Hand in hand amid the verdant fields deliciously they strayed,
- Now culling flowers, now strangling little children as they played.
- And this young Thug, one afternoon, he kissed the maid and said,
- "It really seems to me, my dear, high time that we should wed.
- And as your guardians to me so seriously object,
- 'Twould be as well to kill them; I can do it, I expect."
- Then said the lovely maiden, with a sweet, confiding smile:
- "I go for chopping of them up in most effectual style.
- And as my marriage simply on my papa's death depends,
- Why, just for fun we'll butcher all my relatives and friends."
- The Thug procured a hatchet, and the maiden got a knife;
- They cut and slashed the Brahmin till he was bereft of life;
- Then they seized the loving mother, though she desperately fought,
- And crunched her aged bones beneath the car of Juggernaut.
- A consecrated lasso, thrown with admirable skill,
- Swiftly roped her brother in and choked him 'gainst his will.
- Her sister's fair young form was hooked upon the sacred swing;
- And flying 'round until she died, she screamed like everything.
- The maiden jabbed the knife into the colored coachman's brain,
- And stabbed her uncle William and her aunt Matilda Jane.
- The Thug he steeped his hatchet in the chambermaiden's gore,
- And with a skewer pinned the cook against the cellar door.