You’d been hung before you publish’d your book, to set all the young people a fishing!
There’s my Robert, the trouble I’ve had with him it surpasses a mortal’s bearing,
And all thro’ those devilish angling works—the Lord forgive me for swearing!
I thought he were took with the Morbus one day, I did with his nasty angle!
For “oh dear,” says he, and burst out in a cry, “oh my gut is all got of a tangle!”
It’s a shame to teach a young boy such words—whose blood wouldn’t chill in their veins
To hear him, as I overheard him one day, a-talking of blowing out brains?[16]
And didn’t I quarrel with Sally the cook, and a precious scolding I give her,
“How dare you,” says I, “for to stench the whole house by keeping that stinking liver?”
’Twas enough to breed a fever, it was! they smelt it next door at the Bagots’,—