Mrs. Mackerel, now, was never seen
Out of her chamber, day or night,
Unless her stilts were along—her mien
Was very imposing from such a height,
It imposed upon many a dazzled wight,
Who snuffed the perfume floating down
From the rustling folds of her gorgeous gown,
But never could smell through these bouquets
The fishy odor of former days.
She went on her golden stilts to pray,
Which never became her better than then,
When her murmuring lips were heard to say,
"Thank God, I am not as my fellow-men!"
Her pastor loved as a pastor might—
His house that was built on a golden rock;
He pointed it out as a shining light
To the lesser lambs of his fleecy flock.
The stilts were a help to the church, no doubt,
They kindled its self-expiring embers,
So that before the season was out
It gained a dozen excellent members.
Mrs. Mackerel gave a superb soirée,
Standing on stilts to receive her guests;
The gas-lights mimicked the glowing day
So well, that the birds, in their flowery nests,
Almost burst their beautiful breasts,
Trilling away their musical stories
In Mrs. Mackerel's conservatories.
She received on stilts; a distant bow
Was all the loftiest could attain—
Though some of her friends she did allow
To kiss the hem of her jewelled train.
One gentleman screamed himself quite hoarse
Requesting her to dance; which, of course,
Couldn't be done on stilts, as she
Halloed down to him rather scornfully.
The fact is, when Mackerel kept a shop,
His wife was very fond of a hop,
And now, as the music swelled and rose,
She felt a tingling in her toes,
A restless, tickling, funny sensation
Which didn't agree with her exaltation.
When the maddened music was at its height,
And the waltz was wildest—behold, a sight!
The stilts began to hop and twirl
Like the saucy feet of a ballet-girl.
And their haughty owner, through the air,
Was spin, spin, spinning everywhere.
Everybody got out of the way
To give the dangerous stilts fair play.
In every corner, at every door,
With faces looking like unfilled blanks,
They watched the stilts at their airy pranks,
Giving them, unrequested, the floor.
They never had glittered so bright before;
The light it flew in flashing splinters
Away from those burning, revolving centres;
While the gems on the lady's flying skirts
Gave out their light in jets and spirts.
Poor Mackerel gazed in mute dismay
At this unprecedented display.
"Oh, stop, love, stop!" he cried at last;
But she only flew more wild and fast,
While the flutes and fiddles, bugle and drum,
Followed as if their time had come.
She went at such a bewildering pace
Nobody saw the lady's face,
But only a ring of emerald light
From the crown she wore on that fatal night.
Whether the stilts were propelling her,
Or she the stilts, none could aver.
Around and around the magnificent hall
Mrs. Mackerel danced at her own grand ball.
"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined;"
This must have been a case in kind.
"What's in the blood will sometimes show—"
'Round and around the wild stilts go.
It had been whispered many a time
That when poor Mack was in his prime
Keeping that little retail store,
He had fallen in love with a ballet-girl,
Who gave up fame's entrancing whirl
To be his own, and the world's no more.
She made him a faithful, prudent wife—
Ambitious, however, all her life.
Could it be that the soft, alluring waltz
Had carried her back to a former age,
Making her memory play her false,
Till she dreamed herself on the gaudy stage?
Her crown a tinsel crown—her guests
The pit that gazes with praise and jests?
"Pride," they say, "must have a fall—"
Mrs. Mackerel was very proud—
And now she danced at her own grand ball,
While the music swelled more fast and loud.
The gazers shuddered with mute affright,
For the stilts burned now with a bluish light,
While a glimmering, phosphorescent glow
Did out of the lady's garments flow.
And what was that very peculiar smell?
Fish, or brimstone? no one could tell.
Stronger and stronger the odor grew,
And the stilts and the lady burned more blue;
'Round and around the long saloon,
While Mackerel gazed in a partial swoon,
She approached the throng, or circled from it,
With a flaming train like the last great comet;
Till at length the crowd
All groaned aloud.
For her exit she made from her own grand ball
Out of the window, stilts and all.
None of the guests can really say
How she looked when she vanished away.
Some declare that she carried sail
On a flying fish with a lambent tail;
And some are sure she went out of the room
Riding her stilts like a witch a broom,
While a phosphorent odor followed her track:
Be this as it may, she never came back.
Since then, her friends of the gold-fish fry
Are in a state of unpleasant suspense,
Afraid, that unless they unselfishly try
To make better use of their dollars and sense
To chasten their pride, and their manners mend,
They may meet a similar shocking end.