HARRIS-ING REFLECTIONS
Written after a Visit to the Olympic.
O Sairey Gamp! oh, Sairey Gamp! Of honest people of your stamp, ma’am,
To find a score or even more—the Cynic would not need his lamp, ma’am!
For far and wide on ev’ry side there quite as many, I’m afraid, are
As on each hedge, so folks allege, the plenteous blackberries displayed are.
Just gaze around—what lots are found, of “honest men” (in common diction)
Whose honour, sense, or wealth immense has no existence but in fiction.
Oh, there be few who never knew the great promoters and projectors
Who when they blow a bubble “Co.” obtain from fancy their directors.
And there’s a host of men that boast how many lords as friends they gaze on,
Whose arms no work compiled by Burke was ever called upon to blazon.
How many too from far Peru to China quote their travels daring,
And still, I ween, have never been ten miles beyond the Cross of Charing!
Why scores, I know, the world’s Great Show declare they saw last year at Paris,
Yet saw no more the Gallic shore than you set eyes on Mrs. Harris!
In piteous tones will Mrs. Jones of “better days” and “losses” gibber,
Yet has she ne’er, as I can swear, had anything to lose—the fibber!
There’s Figgs will plead for cash—his need to meet a bill of large amount is—
But that same bill, assert I will, drawn on imagination’s fount is!
Just ask your friend Tom Browne to lend you twenty pounds—or make it fifty;
He blames his fate, “you’re just too late—in fact he must himself be thrifty,
Confound! and dash! last week all cash available in funds invested!”
Those funds, I guess, would nothing less than fancy stocks turn out if tested.
There’s Major Jaw who service saw the great Peninsular campaign in—
Yet ne’er was there! His martial air was built some French château-in-Spain in?
There’s Bragg whose name all lists proclaim, which tell the world how many guineas
A B and C, with D and E, subscribe when sought a lot of tin is
To whitewash blacks, or scatter “tracks”—for Charity! Yet gentle Charis
I fear you’ll find for men so blind no more exists than Mrs. Harris!
Oh, Sairey Gamp, oh Sairey Gamp! This world “a wale,” oh Sairey Gamp, is!
And now and then the best of men (like Pecksniff) but a sorry scamp is.
I’ve, on my word, a sermon heard so clever I should like to quote it—
Denouncing shams, and bams, and crams—yet he who preached it never wrote it!
I feel remorse that fine discourse to fix a qualifying term on
But am compelled to own I held it Mrs. H.’s funeral sermon.
I’ve known also, a medico experiment where sickness floored him,
And try to kill his patient till kind nature stepping in restored him!
Well, thereupon our doctor shone with conscious skill and self-laudation,
As if he’d not his wisdom got from Mrs. H.—in consultation!
And eke in Law you’ll find the flaw Divinity and Physic suffer,
Some juniors drag a heavy bag, but every paper there’s a duffer.
Mere empty show—it’s wrong you know—a swindle! And yet many a barris-
Ter’s earliest brief, I own with grief, has been “the case of Mrs. Harris.”
Fun, 1868.
“Is this a libery?”