All by whom truth is loved.
Accept as fact what, malgré strife,
Research tends to confirm—
That man, and everything with life,
Came from one common germ.
Tinsley’s Magazine. 1868.
Contrast this refined jeu d’esprit with the following specimen of the kind of literature that is sold by street ballad singers. It was printed at Taylor’s Song Mart, Brick Lane, Bethnal Green, and sold for one half-penny:—
Faithless Nelly.
They told him gently she was gone
To the station house, and smil’d;