While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold
And everything comes too late, too late!
"When strawberries seemed like red heavens,—
Terrapin stew a wild dream,—
When my brain was at sixes and sevens,
If my mother had 'folks' and ice cream,
Then I gazed with a lickerish hunger
At the restaurant man and fruit-monger,—
But oh! how I wished I were younger
When the goodies all came in a stream! in a stream!
"I've a splendid blood horse, and—a liver
That it jars into torture to trot;
My row-boat's the gem of the river,-
Gout makes every knuckle a knot!
I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome,
But no palate for ménus,-no eyes for a dome,—
Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home,
When no home but an attic he'd got,-he'd got!
"How I longed, in that lonest of garrets,
Where the tiles baked my brains all July,
For ground to grow two pecks of carrots,
Two pigs of my own in a sty,
A rosebush, a little thatched cottage,
Two spoons-love-a basin of pottage!-
Now in freestone I sit,-and my dotage,--
With a woman's chair empty close by, close by!
"Ah! now, though I sit on a rock,
I have shared one seat with the great;
I have sat knowing naught of the clock
On love's high throne of state;
But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed,
To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed,
And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed,
Had they only not come too late,-too late!"
Fitz Hugh Ludlow.
THE ANNUITY
I GAED to spend a week in Fife-
An unco week it proved to be-
For there I met a waesome wife
Lamentin' her viduity.
Her grief brak out sae fierce and fell,
I thought her heart wad burst the shell;
And, I was sae left to mysel',
The bargain lookit fair eneugh-
She just was turned o' saxty-three-
I couldna guessed she'd prove sae teugh,
By human ingenuity.
But years have come, and years have gane,
And there she's yet as stieve as stane-
The limmer's growin' young again,
Since she got her annuity.
She's crined' awa' to bane and skin,
But that, it seems, is nought to me;
She's like to live-although she's in
The last stage o' tenuity.
She munches wi' her wizen'd gums,
An' stumps about on legs o' thrums;
But comes, as sure as Christmas comes,
To ca' for her annuity.
I read the tables drawn wi' care
For an insurance company;
Her chance o' life was stated there,
Wi' perfect perspicuity.
But tables here or tables there,
She's lived ten years beyond her share,
An' 's like to live a dozen mair,
To ca' for her annuity.
Last Yule she had a fearfu' host,
I thought a kink might set me free-
I led her out, 'mang snaw and frost,
Wi' constant assiduity.
But deil ma' care-the blast gaed by,
And miss'd the auld anatomy-
It just cost me a tooth, for bye
Discharging her annuity.
If there's a sough o' cholera,
Or typhus,-wha sae gleg as she?
She buys up baths, an' drugs, an' a',
In siccan superfluity!
She doesna need-she's fever proof-
The pest walked o'er her very roof-
She tauld me sae-an' then her loof
Held out for her annuity.
Ae day she fell, her arm she brak-
A compound fracture as could be—
Nae leech the cure wad undertake,
Whate'er was the gratuity.
It's cured! She handles 't like a flail-
It does as weel in bits as hale-
But I'm a broken man mysel'
Wi' her and her annuity.
Her broozled flesh and broken banes
Are weel as flesh and banes can be.
She beats the taeds that live in stanes,
An' fatten in vacuity!
They die when they're exposed to air-
They canna thole the atmosphere;
But her!-expose her onywhere-
She lives for her annuity.
If mortal means could nick her thread,
Sma' crime it wad appear to me;
Ca't murder, or ca't homicide,
I'd justify 't-an' do it tae.
But how to fell a withered wife
That's carved out o' the tree o' life-
The timmer limmer daurs the knife
To settle her annuity.
I'd try a shot: but whar's the mark?-
Her vital parts are hid frae me;
Her backbane wanders through her sark
In an unkenn'd corkscrewity.
She's palsified-an shakes her head
Sae fast about, ye scarce can see;
It's past the power o' steel or lead
To settle her annuity.
She might be drowned-but go she'll not
Within a mile o' loch or sea;
Or hanged-if cord could grip a throat
O' siccan exiguity.
It's fitter far to hang the rope
It draws out like a telescope;
'Twad tak a dreadfu' length o' drop To settle her annuity.
Will puzion do't?-It has been tried;
But, be't in hash or fricassee,
That's just the dish she can't abide,
Whatever kind o' gout it hae.
It's needless to assail her doubts,
She gangs by instinct, like the brutes,
An' only eats an' drinks what suits
Hersel' and her annuity.
The Bible says the age o' man
Threescore and ten, perchance, may be; She's ninety-four. Let them who can,
Explain the incongruity.
She should hae lived afore the flood
She's come o' patriarchal blood,
She's some auld Pagan mummified
Alive for her annuity.
K. K.-Can't Calculate
She's been embalmed inside and oot-
She's sauted to the last degree-
There's pickle in her very snoot
Sae caper-like an' cruety.
Lot's wife was fresh compared to her-
They've kyanized the useless knir,
She canna decompose-nae mair
Than her accursed annuity.
The water-drop wears out the rock,
As this eternal jaud wears me;
I could withstand the single shock,
But not the continuity.
It's pay me here, an' pay me there,
An' pay me, pay me, evermair-
I'll gang demented wi' despair-
I'm charged for her annuity.
WHAT poor short-sighted worms we be;
For we can't calculate,
With any sort of sartintee,
What is to be our fate.
These words Prissilla's heart did reach,
And caused her tears to flow,
When first she heard the Elder preach,
About six months ago.
How true it is what he did state,
And thus affected her,
That nobody can't calculate
What is a-gwine to occur.
When we retire, can't calculate
But what afore the morn
Our housen will conflaggerate,
And we be left forlorn.
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