Nine souls in ten, with half his fright,
Would soon have paid the bill at sight,
But misers (let observers watch it)
Will never part with their delight
Till well demanded by a hatchet—
They live hard—and they die to match it.
Thus Hunks, prepared for Mike’s attacking,
Resolved not yet to pay the debt,
But let him take it out in hacking;
However, Mike began to stickle
In word before he used the sickle;
But mercy was not long attendant:
From words at last he took to blows,
And aimed a cut at Hunks’s nose;
That made it what some folks are not—
A Member very independent.
Heaven knows how far this cruel trick
Might still have led, but for a tramper
That came in danger’s very nick,
To put Maloney to the scamper.
But still compassion met a damper;
There lay the severed nose, alas!
Beside the daisies on the grass,
“Wee, crimson-tipt” as well as they,
According to the poet’s lay:
And there stood Hunks, no sight for laughter!
Away ran Hodge to get assistance,
With nose in hand, which Hunks ran after,
But somewhat at unusual distance.
In many a little country place
It is a very common case
To have but one residing doctor,
Whose practice rather seems to be
No practice, but a rule of three,
Physician—surgeon—drug-decocter;
Thus Hunks was forced to go once more
Where he had ta’en his tooth before.
His mere name made the learnëd man hot—
“What! Hunks again within my door!
I’ll pull his nose;” quoth Hunks, “you cannot.”
The doctor looked and saw the case
Plain as the nose not on his face.
“O! hum—ha—yes—I understand.”
But then arose a long demur,
For not a finger would he stir
Till he was paid his fee in hand;
That matter settled, there they were,
With Hunks well strapped upon his chair.
The opening of a surgeon’s job—
His tools, a chestful or a drawful—
Are always something very awful,
And give the heart the strangest throb;
But never patient in his funks
Looked half so like a ghost as Hunks,
Or surgeon half so like a devil
Prepared for some infernal revel:
His huge black eye kept rolling, rolling,
Just like a bolus in a box:
His fury seemed above controlling,
He bellowed like a hunted ox:
“Now, swindling wretch, I’ll show thee how
We treat such cheating knaves as thou;
Oh! sweet is this revenge to sup;
I have thee by the nose—it’s now
My turn—and I will turn it up.”
Guess how the miser liked the scurvy
And cruel way of venting passion;
The snubbing folks in this new fashion
Seemed quite to turn him topsy turvy;
He uttered prayers, and groans, and curses,
For things had often gone amiss
And wrong with him before, but this
Would be the worst of all reverses!
In fancy he beheld his snout
Turned upward like a pitcher’s spout;
There was another grievance yet,
And fancy did not fail to show it,
That he must throw a summerset,
Or stand upon his head to blow it.
And was there then no argument
To change the doctor’s vile intent,
And move his pity?—yes, in truth,
And that was—paying for the tooth.
“Zounds! pay for such a stump! I’d rather—”
But here the menace went no farther,
For with his other ways of pinching,
Hunks had a miser’s love of snuff,
A recollection strong enough
To cause a very serious flinching;
In short he paid and had the feature
Replaced as it was meant by nature;
For tho’ by this ’twas cold to handle,
(No corpse’s could have felt more horrid,)
And white just like an end of candle,
The doctor deemed and proved it too,
That noses from the nose will do
As well as noses from the forehead;
So, fixed by dint of rag and lint,
The part was bandaged up and muffled.
The chair unfastened, Hunks arose,
And shuffled out, for once unshuffled;
And as he went, these words he snuffled—
“Well, this is ‘paying thro’ the nose.’”
THE LOGICIANS.
AN ILLUSTRATION.
“Metaphysics were a large field in which to exercise the weapons logic had put into their hands—“—Scriblerus.
