[SIR HENRY REPLIES.]
R. D., no more dyspeptic,
I am called a kindly man;
Of a prisoner’s worth no sceptic,
I defend him all I can.
My delight and my endeavour
Is the jury to restrain,
And restore a culprit clever
To his loving friends again.
For I’ve switchbacked,
For I’ve switchbacked—
Yes, I’ve switchbacked, Mr. D.;
And that patented health-giver
Has, in acting on my liver,
Made another judge of me.
That New-born Babe.
HERE was once a new-born infant; at the moment of its birth
It became the greatest villain that was ever known on earth.
For there wasn’t any item in the catalogue of crime
Which that babe had not committed in the briefest space of time.
When its little peepers opened to their primal ray of light
They’d a look of dissipation and of being out all night,
And, before a score of seconds had passed o’er its infant head,
It had, in a fit of passion, kicked its mother out of bed.
At a week, a scheme of murder floated through its baby brain,
For the monthly nurse, unwisely, had displayed her watch and chain;
So he slew her, and he stole them, with an infantile “Ha, ha!”
As he managed that suspicion should be cast upon his pa.
Then he crowed till he was purple, and his back they had to pat,
When the famous Mr. Berry made his pa a new cravat;
And when nobody was looking and the hour was nice and still,
He secured his father’s papers, and he tampered with the will.
He bequeathed himself the mansion, the carriages, and plate,
And all the landed property and personal estate.
When the law his pa had Berried, with a sly, Satanic mirth,
He ante-dated twenty years his “stifficate” of birth.