The Strange case of the Prime Minister and Mr. Muldoon, by Arthur Law, (London, 1886) was a sixpenny political pamphlet written to ridicule the Earl of Granville, Lord Hartington, Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone.
The best thing in it was the following little parody:—
“You are old, father William,” the young man said,
“You are not far off eighty, I ween;
And yet you can speak for an hour or two
And no one find out what you mean.”
“In my youth,” father William replied to his son,
“All my scruples I laid on the shelf;
And now to drag from me a plain yes or no
Would puzzle the devil himself.”