And barbers will soon have to work the tread-mill,
If their razors are brought to a daily stand-still.
For now, with its works nearly hid from our view,
In the very same chair in which we must sit too,
While a music-box plays like a musical elf,
The High-mettled Razor doth shave us itself.”
Cuthbert Bede.
(This amusing parody, by the author of Verdant Green, originally appeared in Punch. It was afterwards included in Medley, a small shilling volume of light reading published by James Blackwood in 1856. The last verse referred to the invention by a joiner, at North Shields, of a machine which was to lather and shave a man whilst seated in an arm-chair.)
The High Mettled Guardsman.