And if you're passing earlier, pray rat-tat at my door;
But stay I have so much to do, that p'rhaps 'twill better be,
Not to depend on you at all, but call myself at three.
* * * *
I cannot, though an Emperor, stay quietly at home,
Some impulse irresistibly makes me for ever roam;
Each week it holds me tighter still beneath its mystic thrall,
Till soon I am afraid I shall not eat or sleep at all.
Truth, June 21, 1877.
Another parody of the same original, called The Business of Pleasure, appeared in Truth, May 9, 1878.