Instead of getting shallower it deep and deeper grew.
And now a frenzied client who had lost his all that day,
Seized “Selwyn’s Nisi Prius” from the bookshelf where it lay,
And in the hole he dashed it, with a howl of maniac glee,
And wished all law and lawyers at the bottom of the sea.
And, fired by his example, the crowd seized, one by one,
On “Chitty,” and on “Starkey,” and on “Coke and Lyttleton”
On Bacon’s Whole Abridgement, with tooth and nail they fell,
But where they wished those authors, ’twere not polite to tell.
In vain the poor librarian, while tears ran down his cheek,