This twelvemonth at the grindstone I have ground,
Toiling to meet the toll of profiteers,
And now comes Austen, budgeting around,
"Comes the blind Fury with the abhorréd shears"
(Milton), and leaves me naked as a poodle,
Shorn—to the buff—of my laborious boodle.
I own it irks me little when he goes
For fancy weeds and wine of fizzy brands;
But I protest at parting through the nose
For what the meanest human life demands;
Nothing is sacred from his monstrous paw,
Not letters, no, nor even usquebaugh.
That beverage, which invites to balmy sleep
(Guerdon of toil), is on the upward ramp;
My harmless doggerel—in itself so cheap—
Despatched by post will want a larger stamp;
Nor have I any wives or children to
Abate the mulcting of my revenue.
But if you tell me I am asked to bleed
For England; if, by being rudely tapped,
My modest increment may help at need
To spare some Office which would else be scrapped;
If my poor fleece of wool by heavy cropping
Can save the Civil Estimates from dropping;—
If I can keep in comfortable ease
But one superfluous Staff for one week's play;
If from my squalor I may hope to squeeze
The wherewithal to check for half a day
The untimely razing of a single Hut—
'Tis well; I will not even murmur "Tut."
O. S.
A TRYING DAY IN MEDIÆVAL TIMES.
The public torturer hurried home in an irritable frame of mind. The day had been for him one long round of annoyances. When he commenced his duties that morning, already exasperated by the thought that if the drought continued the produce of his tiny patch of ground would be completely ruined, he was aggrieved to find that far more than his fair share of a recently arrived batch of heretics had been allotted to him. During the midday break for refreshments his dreamy assistant had allowed the furnace to go out, bringing upon the torturer's own head a severe censure for the consequent delay. In the afternoon, glancing occasionally through the narrow window, he was mortified to see that the promising rain-clouds, which might yet have saved his cabbages, were dispersing; and then, to crown all, just as he was finishing for the day he had caught hold of a pair of pincers a trifle too near the white-hot end and seared his hand.
As he approached the cottage which was enshrined in his heart by a thousand sacred associations as home, the torturer strove to rise superior to his worries. He whistled bravely as he crossed the threshold and caressed his wife with his usual tenderness. Intuitively she divined the bitterness of the mood which lay beneath the torturer's seeming cheerfulness, but she stifled her curiosity like the wise little woman she was and hastened to lay his supper before him. Through the progress of the meal—prepared by her in the way the torturer loved so well—she diverted him with her lively prattle. And at length, when she trod on the dog and caused it to give out a long-drawn howl, she made such a neat allusion to the Chamber and heretics that the torturer laughed till the tears streamed down his cheeks.