| "Must pore where babbling waters flow, And watch unfolding roses blow." |
You no doubt remember in what a sad plight we left our young friend Timothy Wilberforce; how he had been gradually led on by Cupid, buoyed up and transported, till he attained within a step of the pinnacle of bliss—and then, how the mischief-making God had precipitated him to the very brink of despair; how, like Sisyphus,
"Up the high hill he heav'd the huge round stone;"
and how
| "The huge round stone resulting with a bound, Thunder'd impetuous down, and smoked along the ground." |
In fine, he had been caught and caged, manacled, cuffed, and then kicked, (that's the word,) by our good little, sweet little Molly, to his heart's content. Alas! this truly is one of the miseries of human life. Had Tim received a kick from a man fashioned like himself, he might at least have returned the blow. Had it been bestowed by one fashioned after the manner of the Houyhnims, with hock and hoof, or had it been driven full in his face by an ass, shod with a double set of irons, he might have consoled himself with the reflection that some skilful surgeon would replace the mangled elements, or kind nature reproduce a healthy action. But the impress of a damsel's foot upon a generous heart was far more difficult to efface. The wound it inflicted, had baffled through all ages the skill of anatomists, phrenologists, and philosophers. Tim then, could only bewail the hopelessness of his situation in the mournful strains of the gentle Corydon:
| "She is faithless, and I am undone. Ye that witness the woes I endure, Let reason instruct you to shun What it cannot instruct you to cure." |
These were the first sensations of his softened soul, but as time moved on with his unslackened wing, other thoughts unbidden sprung upon his mind. Memory indeed, for awhile continued to brood over "the ills that flesh is heir to," but the good Tim, at last, came to the same conclusion with the wise McPherson, that
| "To cut his throat, a brave man scorns, So, instead of his throat, he cut—his corns." |
Tim, like all honest bachelors, swore most roundly, that he would never more be caught by woman's wiles; that she was heartless, faithless, deceitful, "and desperately wicked." Alas! poor Tim knew not the susceptibility of his own heart; and Cupid but smiled to think how easily he could hold our hero in magic thraldom. Tim indeed could cry out in the agony of woe,