THERE had been nothing to prepare Curtain Wells for its chastizement. No wreathèd pamphlet warned readers in the most choice preliminary duff that a sarcastick comet would presently singe their vices, their follies and their vanities. Nobody had been invited to subscribe in advance to his own ridicule. As it were on the wings of a Westerly gale, these destructive little volumes settled upon the fields of Pleasure like locusts on a Bedouin plantation.
Two speculative chap-book pedlars sold the first twenty to as many drinkers of chalybeate hastening home to breakfast. For those who stopped to buy there was no breakfast that morning. The kidneys and the bacon and the eggs and the ham and the loin chops and the red herrings and the toasted bread were neglected. The vanguard of purchasers were, in reading about neighbours, too much diverted, and, in reading about themselves, too indignant to eat.
Out went the kidneys and the bacon and the eggs and the ham and the loin chops and the red herrings and the toasted bread, frozen stiff in their own fat; and out went the vanguard to warn the main army of fashion that scurrility, satire and malice were abroad in many metres.
"Listen to this, Moon," ejaculated Major Tarry, as, undeterred by the driving wind, he strode along, quoting extracts that were perfectly inaudible to his companion.
"Listen to this, will you listen to this,"
| "Like a lap-dog he's fed with a second-best spoon, |
| And bays as he should at the sight of the Moon." |
"Yes, but listen to this," said the Justice treading heavily in a puddle as he spoke.
| "Do not tarry, |
| M**n, but marry, |
| While you're still upon the wax, |
| Though above her, |
| You can love her, |
| And avoid the window tax." |
"Very low, very low indeed," said Tarry.
"So 'tis," quoth the Justice, "but the next verse is lower still."