Mr. Woodhouse is almost as much interested in the work as the girls, and tries in vain to revive old recollections of the excellent riddles of his youth, which always end in
“Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.”
Mr. Elton, who is constantly with the girls, is induced to furnish a riddle of his own composition—though, with the bashfulness of incipient authorship, he passes it off as a charade which a friend of his has addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration—and he is gone the next moment. The charade is as follows:—
“My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease;
Another view of man my second brings,
Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
“But, ah! united what reverse we have,
Man’s boasted power and freedom all are flown;
Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,