"A dollar and a half for that!" says Jehu.
"Vot of it?—here's the blunt," said the sailor, handing the driver a three-dollar note.
"I can't change it," said the latter.
"Well, never mind!" rejoined the tar; "this will make it right!"
The sudden crash of the other window told the driver in what manner the "change" had been made!
Some bachelor-reader, pining in single-blessedness, may be induced, by the perusal of the ensuing parody upon Romeo's description of an apothecary, to "turn from the error of his way" of life, and both confer and receive "reward:"
"I do remember an old Bachelor,
And hereabout he dwells; whom late I noted
In suit of sables, with a care-worn brow,
Conning his books; and meagre were his looks;
Celibacy had worn him to the bone;
And in his silent chamber hung a coat,
The which the moths had used not less than he.
Four chairs, one table, and an old hair trunk,
Made up 'the furniture;' and on his shelves
A greasy candle-stick; a broken mug,
Two tables, and a box of old cigars;
Remnants of volumes, once in some repute,
Were thinly scattered round, to tell the eye
Of prying strangers, "This man had no wife!"
His tattered elbow gaped most piteously;
And ever as he turned him round; his skin
Did through his stockings peep upon the day.
Noting his gloom, unto myself I said:
'And if a man did covet single life,
Reckless of joys that matrimony gives,
Here lives a gloomy wretch would show it him
In such most dismal colors, that the shrew,
Or slut, or idiot, or the gossip spouse,
Were each an heaven, compared to such a life!'"
"There are always two sides to a question," the bachelor-"defendant" may affirm, in answer to this; and possibly himself try a hand at a contrast-parody.