Alas! concluding in the usual strain,
That what with everlasting wear and tear,
The scrubbing-brushes hadn’t got a hair—
The brooms—mere stumps—would never serve again—
The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds,
The towels worn to threads,
The tubs and pails too shatter’d to be mended—
And what was added with a deal of pain,
But as accounts correctly would explain,
Tho’ thirty thousand pounds had been expended—
The Blackamoors had still been wash’d in vain!
“In fact, the negroes were as black as ink,
Yet, still as the Committee dared to think,
And hoped the proposition was not rash,
A rather free expenditure of cash—”
But ere the prospect could be made more sunny—
Up jump’d a little, lemon-coloured man,
And with an eager stammer, thus began,
In angry earnest, though it sounded funny:
“What! More subscriptions! No—no—no,—not I!
You have had time—time—time enough to try!
They WON’T come white! then why—why—why—why—why
More money?”
“Why!” said the Chairman, with an accent bland,
And gentle waving of his dexter hand,
“Why must we have more dross, and dirt, and dust,
More filthy lucre, in a word, more gold—
The why, sir, very easily is told,
Because Humanity declares we must!
We’ve scrubb’d the negroes till we’ve nearly killed ’em,
And finding that we cannot wash them white,
But still their nigritude offends the sight,
We mean to gild ’em?”
A DISCOVERY IN ASTRONOMY.
NE day—I had it from a hasty mouth,
Accustom’d to make many blunders daily,
And therefore will not name, precisely, South,
Herschell, or Baily—
But one of those great men who watch the skies,
With all their rolling, winking eyes,
Was looking at that Orb whose ancient God
Was patron of the Ode, and Song, and Sonnet,
When thus he musing cried—“It’s very odd
That no Astronomer of all the squad
Can tell the nature of those spots upon it!
“Lord, master!” muttered John, a liveried elf,
“To wonder so at spots upon the sun!
I’ll tell you what he’s done—
Freckled himself!”