But this is nought—of deadlier kind,
A ninefold woe remains behind.
O why were we so art and part?
So like in taste, so one in heart?
Nine cottages may be to let,
But here’s the thought to make us fret,
We cannot each add Frederick B.
To our united family.
THE DEAD ROBBERY.
“Here’s that will sack a city.”—Henry the IVth.
F all the causes that induce mankind
To strike against themselves a mortal docket,
Two eminent above the rest we find—
To be in love, or to be out of pocket:
Both have made many melancholy martyrs,
But p’rhaps, of all the felonies de se,
By ponds, and pistols, razors, ropes, and garters,
Two-thirds have been through want of £. s. d.!
Thus happen’d it with Peter Bunce;
Both in the dumps and out of them at once,
From always drawing blanks in Fortune’s lottery,
At last, impatient of the light of day,
He made his mind up to return his clay
Back to the pottery.
Feigning a raging tooth that drove him mad,
From twenty divers druggists’ shops
He begg’d enough of laudanum by drops
T’ effect the fatal purpose that he had;
He drank them, died, and while old Charon ferried him,
The Coroner convened a dozen men,
Who found his death was phial-ent—and then
The Parish buried him!
Unwatch’d, unwept,
As commonly a Pauper sleeps, he slept;
There could not be a better opportunity
For bodies to steal a body so ill kept,
With all impunity.
In fact, when Night o’er human vice and folly
Had drawn her very necessary curtains,
Down came a fellow with a sack and spade,
Accustom’d many years to drive a trade,
With that Anatomy more Melancholy
Than Burton’s!
The Watchman in his box was dozing;
The Sexton drinking at the Cheshire Cheese;
No fear of any creature interposing,
The human Jackal work’d away at ease:
He toss’d the mould to left and right,
The shabby coffin came in sight,
And soon it open’d to his double-knocks,—
When lo! the stiff’un that he thought to meet,
Starts sudden up, like Jacky-in-a-box,
Upon his seat!
Awaken’d from his trance,
For so the laudanum had wrought by chance,
Bunce stares up at the moon, next looking level,
He spies a shady Figure, tall and bony,
Then shudders out these words “Are—you—the—Devil?”
“The Devil a bit of him,” says Mike Mahoney,
“I’m only com’d here, hoping no affront,
To pick up honestly a little blunt—”
“Blunt!” echoes Bunce, with a hoarse croak of laughter,—
“Why, man, I turn’d life’s candle in the socket,
Without a rap in either pocket,
For want of that same blunt you’re looking after!”
“That’s true,” says Mike, “and many a pretty man
Has cut his stick upon your very plan,
Not worth a copper, him and all his trumps,
And yet he’s fetch’d a dacent lot of stuff,
Provided he was sound and fresh enough,
And dead as dumps.”
“I take,” quoth Bunce, with a hard wink, “the fact is,
You mean a subject for a surgeon’s practice,—
I hope the question is not out of reason,
But just suppose a lot of flesh and bone,
For instance, like my own,
What might it chance to fetch now, at this season?”
“Fetch, is it?” answers Mike, “why prices differ,—
But taking this same small bad job of ours,
I reckon, by the pow’rs!
I’ve lost ten pound by your not being stiffer!”
“Ten pounds!” Bunce echoes in a sort of flurry,
“Odd zounds!
Ten pounds,
How sweet it sounds,
Ten pounds!”
And on his feet upspringing in a hurry—
It seem’d the operation of a minute—
A little scuffle—then a whack—
And then he took the Body Snatcher’s sack
And poked him in it!
Such is this life!
A very pantomime for tricks and strife!
See Bunce, so lately in Death’s passive stock,
Invested, now as active as a griffin,
Walking—no ghost—in velveteens and smock,
To sell a stiff’un!
A flash of red, then one of blue,
At last, like lighthouse, came in view;
Bunce rang the nightbell; wiped his highlows muddy;
His errand told; the sack produced;
And by a sleepy boy was introduced
To Dr. Oddy, writing in his study
The bargain did not take long time to settle,
“Ten pounds,
Odd zounds!
How well it sounds,
Ten pounds,”
Chink’d into Bunce’s palm in solid metal.
With joy half-crazed,
It seem’d some trick of sense, some airy gammon,
He gazed and gazed,
At last, possess’d with the old lust of Mammon,
Thought he, “With what a very little trouble,
This little capital I now might double——”
Another scuffle of its usual brevity,—
And Doctor Oddy, in his suit of black,
Was finishing, within the sack,
His “Thoughts upon Longevity!”