The Widow Cross, I should have told,
Had seen three husbands to the mould;
She never sought an Indian pyre,
Like Hindoo wives that lose their loves,
But with a proper sense of fire,
Put up, instead, with “three removes:”
Thus, when with any tender words
Or tears she spoke about her loss,
The dear departed, Mr. Cross,
Came in for nothing but his thirds;
For, as all widows love too well,
She liked upon the list to dwell,
And oft ripp’d up the old disasters—
She might, indeed, have been supposed
A great ship owner, for she prosed
Eternally of her Three Masters!
Thus, foolish woman! while she nursed
Her mild souchong, she talk’d and reckon’d
What had been left her by her first,
And by her last, and by her second.
Alas! not all her annual rents
Could then entice the little German,—
Not Mr. Cross’s Three Per Cents,
Or Consols, ever make him her man;
He liked her cash, he liked her houses,
But not that dismal bit of land
She always settled on her spouses.
So taking up his hat and band,
Said he “You’ll think my conduct odd—
But here my hopes no more may linger;
I thought you had a wedding-finger,
But oh!—it is a curtain-rod!”
“DON’T YOU SMELL FIRE?”
I.
UN!—run for St. Clement’s engine!
For the Pawnbroker’s all in a blaze,
And the pledges are frying and singing—
Oh! how the poor pawners will craze!
Now where can the turncock be drinking?
Was there ever so thirsty an elf?—
But he still may tope on, for I’m thinking
That the plugs are as dry as himself.
II.
The engines!—I hear them come rumbling;
There’s the Phœnix! the Globe! and the Sun!
What a row there will be, and a grumbling
When the water don’t start for a run!
See! there they come racing and tearing,
All the street with loud voices is fill’d;
Oh! its only the firemen a-swearing
At a man they’ve run over and kill’d!