SMORLTORKIANA.
["Count Smorltork—the famous foreigner—gathering materials for his great work on England!... 'Have you been long in England?' asked Mr. Pickwick. 'Long—very long time—fortnight—more.' 'Do you stay here long?' 'One week.' 'You will have enough to do,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'to gather all the materials you want in that time.' 'Eh, they are gathered,' said the Count."—Pickwick.]
The Smorltork race have multiplied
Since Dickens wrote about them.
They prate and rate on every side;
Fools read, and wise men doubt them.
To every land from every land,
Post-haste, the prattlers travel.
They take a week to understand,
A fortnight to unravel,
A month, at most, to write a book
That sums up all creation;
They fathom England in a look.
And France in a sensation.
But most of all they seem to love
To cross the wide Atlantic.
Then Jove and all the gods above
Must roar at Smorltork antic.
Smorltork—a Briton or a Frank,
A scribe or a fanatic—
The Yankee race will gauge, grade, rank,
In summary emphatic.
He, like a cockney sparrow, cocks
His eye at all around him,
As Pharisee his sense it shocks,
As Philistine, confounds him.
In seven hours he sums a State,
In seven days the lot of them;
And his next business is—to "slate"
And talk prodigious rot of them.
At a huge, motley continent
He gives a glance quite cursory,
And vows it seethes with discontent,
And is corruption's nursery.
He finds New York a Tammany den,
Chicago just a Hades;
The Yankees not quite gentlemen,
The Yankee girls scarce ladies.
Slave to the sex, the male, he vows,
Is but the female's poodle;
And when not worshipping his spouse,
He bows the knee to "Boodle."
The labouring East, the lawless West,
He scans in a "split second,"
And in "two jiffs" of scampering quest
The Stars and Stripes are "reckoned."
They're "gathered" in his shallow brain,
Like pea-nuts in a pannikin.
Bah! Smorltork is a vapid, vain,
Vituperative mannikin.
"Potry, poltic, science, art,
All tings"—from pigs to pictures—
He bans in criticisms "smart,"
And sciolistic strictures.
Of courtesy the open shame,
Of feelings coarse affronter.
He's only fit to play the game
Of Mrs. Leo Hunter.
For when to other lands he strays,
The fool insults their banners,
Because he doesn't like their ways,
Nor understand their manners.
Peripatetic Podsnap, he
Makes Punch's nerves feel tinglish,
Who naught of good abroad can see
Because it is not "English."
Ah, Brother Jonathan, old friend,
The Smorltork chitter-chatter
Some day, like Tammany, will end,
Meanwhile it doesn't matter.
The Smorltorks are a shallow set,
Cantankerous and cranky;
But Punch takes not from them, "you bet,"
His notions of things Yankee!
Motto of Stalkers.—"Going for deer life!"
Curate. "So sorry to hear your Husband's met with an Accident, Mrs. Snape."
Mrs. Snape. "Yes, Sir, 'e's very bad, pore Man! 'E wur workin' on the Railway Line th' other day an' a Engine come along an' run clean over 'is pore Leg; an' now 'e'll be laid up abed for weeks. It's what I b'lieve the Doctors calls Locomotive attacks ye!