SUPERFICIAL CULTURE
I'll tell of a certain old dame;
The same
Had a beautiful piggy, whose name
Was James;
and whose beauty and worth,
From the day of his birth,
Were matters of popular fame,
And his claim
To gentility no one could blame.
So, seeing his promise, she thought
She ought
To have him sufficiently taught
The art
Of deportment, to go
Into company; so
A master of dancing she brought,
Who was fraught
With a style which the piggiwig caught.
So his company manners were rare.
His care
Of social observances there
Would bear
The closest inspection,
And not a reflection
Could rest on his actions, howe'er
You might care
To examine 'em down to a hair.
Now, things went beau-ti-ful-ly,
Till he
Fell in love with a dame of degree;
Pardie!
When he tried for to speak,
But could only say, "O w-e-e-k!"
For, whatever his polish might be,
Why, dear me!
He was pig at the bottom, you see.
H. PYLE
If one could always hold one's tongue as to what one sees, one would be the better for it. They are the wise people of this world who keep silence as to what they see; many such there are who behold things such as neither you nor I may ever hope to look upon, and yet we know nothing of this because they say nothing of it, going their own ways like common folks, and as though they saw nothing in an egg but the meat.
Dame Margery Twist of Tavistock town was not one of these wise folks who hold their tongues; she was a good, gossiping, chattering old soul, whose hen never hatched a chick but all of the neighbors knew of it, as the saying goes. The poor old creature had only one eye; how she lost the other you shall presently hear, and also how her wonderful tulip garden became like anybody else's tulip garden.
Dame Margery Twist lived all alone with a great tabby cat. She dwelt in a little cottage that stood back from the road, and just across the way from the butcher's shop. All within was as neat and as bright as a new pin, so that it was a delight just to look upon the row
of blue dishes upon the dresser, the pewter pipkins as bright as silver, or the sanded floor, as clean as your mother's table. Over the cottage twined sweet woodbines, so that the air was ladened with their fragrance in the summer-time, when the busy, yellow-legged bees droned amid the blossoms from the two hives that stood along against the wall. But the wonder of the garden was the tulip bed, for there were no tulips in all England like them, and folks came from far and near, only to look upon them and to smell their fragrance. They stood in double rows, and were of all colors—white, yellow, red, purple, and pied. They bloomed early, and lasted later than any others, and, when they were in flower, all the air was filled with their perfume.