Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

There was a moment’s silence—Brown had fallen on the cat;

She was too thick for a book-mark, but too thin for a mat;

And he was all wounds and bruises, from his head to his foot,

And seven breadths of Brussels were ruined with the soot.

“O wedded love, how beautiful, how sweet a thing thou art!”

Up from her chair did Mistress Brown, as she saw him falling, start,

And shrieked aloud as a sickening fear did her inmost heartstrings gripe,

“Josiah Winterbotham Brown, have you gone and smashed that pipe?”

Then fiercely starts that Mr. Brown, as one that had been wode,

And big his bosom swelled with wrath, and red his visage glowed;