Cursed be the want of acres,—doubly cursed the want of tin!
Cursed be the marriage contract, that enslaved thy soul to greed!
Cursed be the sallow lawyer, that prepared and drew the deed!
Cursed be his foul apprentice, who the loathsome fees did earn!
Cursed be the clerk and parson,—cursed be the whole concern!
Charles Kingsley, a clergyman of attainments, possessed the same type of whimsical humor as the later and greater Lewis Carroll.
His Water Babies from which a short extract is given, is a classic in child literature.
THE PROFESSOR’S MALADY
They say that no one has ever yet seen a water-baby. For my part, I believe that the naturalists get dozens of them when they are out dredging, but they say nothing about them and throw them overboard again, for fear of spoiling their theories. But you see the professor was found out, as every one is in due time. A very terrible old fairy found the professor out. She felt his bumps, and cast his nativity, and took the lunars of him carefully inside and out; and so she knew what he would do as well as if she had seen it in a print book, as they say in the dear old west country. And he did it. And so he was found out beforehand, as everybody always is; and the old fairy will find out the naturalists some day, and put them in the Times; and then on whose side will the laugh be?
So all the doctors in the country were called in to make a report on his case; and of course every one of them flatly contradicted the other: else what use is there in being men of science? But at last the majority agreed on a report, in the true medical language, one half bad Latin, the other half worse Greek, and the rest what might have been English, if they had only learned to write it. And this is the beginning thereof: