(See decision Re JACKSON), take burdens their backs on, I cannot conceive. It seems stupid
Beyond all expression to have a "possession" whose "ownness" there's desperate doubt of,
And which (if she's nous) you can't keep in your house, nor yet (if she's "savvy") keep out of!
What is "Hymen's halter"? I fidget and falter! The Beaks seem to palter and fumble.
In such a strange fashion, I fly in a passion, and vow that the world is a jumble.
Law seems a wigged noodle, as tame as a poodle, the whole darned caboodle (as 'ARRY sees)
Is ructions and "rot," and our "rulers" a lot of confounded old foodles and Pharisees!
Yes, that's what I think about Marriage and Drink—if you may call it thought, which with frenzy is fraught, and gives me a "head" like bad whiskey; whose dread is on me day and night, makes me wake in a fright, from visions most solemn of column on column of such "printed matter" and paragraph chatter, as makes me feel flatter than cold eggless batter upon a lead platter—as mad as a hatter, and who will relieve me? Can anyone?
I tell you it's dreadful to face a whole bedful of spectres and spooks (born of papers and books) with, most horrible looks, limbs contorted in crooks, and bat-wings with big hooks, which haunt all the nooks of tester and curtain, and which, I am certain, will drive me insane if some one can't explain where the mischief we are, 'midst the jumble and jar of factions and fads, of crotchets and cads, of Tolstois and Jeunes, and Ibsens (whose lunes are more lunatic still). Oh, I'd learn with a will from any or aught, who could bring me, fresh caught, with lucidity fraught (what so long I have sought) a Clear Comforting Thought—though a Penny One!