"An elopement!—Monstrous!—Oh! that I should have lived to hear such a proposition!"
Need the sequel be insisted on? Dick wept, prayed, capered, tore his hair, and acted a thousand shrewd extravagances; swore he would hang himself to the toll-bar, or cut his throat with an oyster-knife, if his own dear Priscilla did not consent to unite her destiny with his; and, in fact, so worked upon the damsel's sensibilities, that she had no help for it but to gasp forth a reluctant consent. An instant, and all was ready for departure. Crack went the whip, round went the wheels, and away went the fond couple to Gretna-green, rattling along the high north road at the rate of fourteen miles an hour!
Thus he who at nine o'clock in the morning was an adventurer without a sixpence in his pocket, by the same hour in the evening was a gentleman in possession of a woman worth eight hundred pounds per annum!—Gentle reader, truth is strange,—stranger than fiction.
THE MAN WITH THE TUFT.
BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.
I. I ever at college From commoners shrank, Still craving the knowledge Of people of rank: In my glass, my lord's ticket I eagerly stuffed; And all call'd me "Riquet," The man with the Tuft.
II. My patron! most noble! Of highest degree! Thou never canst probe all My homage for thee! Thy hand—oh! I'd lick it, Though often rebuff'd; And still I am "Riquet," The man with the Tuft!
III. Too oft the great, shutting Their doors on the bold, Do deeds that are cutting, Say words that are cold! Through flattery's wicket My body I've stuff'd, And so I am "Riquet," The man with the Tuft!
IV. His lordship's a poet, Enraptured I sit; He's dull—(and I know it)— I call him a wit! His fancy, I nick it, By me he is puff'd. And still I am "Riquet," The man with the Tuft!