He walked through squares, and past each shop,
Of speed he went to the utmost top,
Each step he took with a bound and a hop,
And he found his leg he could not stop.
Horror and fright were in his face,
The neighbours thought he was running a race;
He clung to a gas-post to stay his pace,
But the leg wouldn’t stop, but kept on the chace.
Then he call’d to some men with all his might,
“Oh! stop this leg or I’m murdered quite.”
But though they heard him aid invite,
He, in less than a minute was out of sight.
He ran o’er hill and dale, and plain,
To ease his weary bones he’d fain;
He threw himself down, but all in vain,
The leg got up, and was off again.
He walk’d of days and nights a score,
Of Europe he had made the Tour,
He died!—but though he was no more,
The leg walked on the same as before.
In Holland, sometimes it comes in sight,
A skeleton on a cork leg tight:
No cash did the artist’s skill requite,
He never was paid, and it served him right.
My tale I’ve told both plain and free,
Of the rummest merchant that ever could be,
Who never was buried, tho’ dead we see,
And I’ve been singing his L E G.[29]
THE ONE HORSE CHAY.
Mrs. Bubb was gay and free, fair, fat, and forty three,
And blooming as a Peony in buxom May,
The toast she long had been of Farringdon Within,
And she fill’d the better half of a one horse chay.
Mrs. Bubb said to her lord, “you can, Bubb, well afford,
Whate’er a Common Councilman in prudence may;
We’ve no brats to plague our lives, and the soap concern it thrives,
Let us take a trip to Brighton in the one horse chay.”