ONE morning I said to my wife,
Near the time when the heavens are rife
With the Equinoctial strife,
"Arabella, the weather looks ugly as sin!
Observe, how those mists from the ocean begin
To creep eastward and blend
With the sickly street vapors fantastic and thin;
So, (won't you attend?) keep the children within,
Safe-housed from these damps of September!
For myself--as I'm studying 'Barret
On Drainage' just now--I'll go up to the garret,
And thus will be barred from all noises,
And tumults of infantile voices!
(Please listen, my dear! I am speaking, I think,
And put down your baby! he'll drink, and he'll drink
Warm tea till he pops!) so again let me say,
Keep the juveniles housed on this treacherous day,
May I trust you, for once, to remember?"
Then, with pain (for my limbs are rheumatic),
I slowly climbed up to the attic;
And all the 'mid-stories o'er passed,
Reached the dismal old garret at last!
"Now," thought I, "no echoes of riot
Can break my philosopher's quiet;
Thank heaven! all luxuries scorning
Of stuffed couch or sofa,--I'll settle just here--
(Though perhaps I would like a less imbecile chair)
And be deep in research the whole morning!"
Alack! for all bright expectation!
While safe, as I fancied, from worry,
For below me I heard,
Ere my choler was stirred
First, a faint indefinable flurry,
Then, a deep roll, and thunder-like rumble,
With the shock of some terrible tumble,
Which shook the whole house to its basis!
In a trice from my foolish elation
I emerged with the blankest of faces,
And, well, I confess as a Christian I erred
But who, my good sir, or good madam!
Could have throttled, (just then), "the old Adam"?
I'm afraid that I muttered a something
That ought to have rested a dumb thing!
Yet before your stern censure you urge on,
Bethink you! the same term 's been uttered
Quite roundly, not stammered or stuttered,
By good men from Edwards to Spurgeon!
So, pray don't confuse me,
But kindly excuse me,
If once in a justified passion,
I followed their clerical fashion,
(Albeit much modified too!)
And whispered, not shouted, a d--n!
Of course, to the doorway I scurried,
And down the old stairs from the attic
(In spite of my twinges rheumatic),
Incontent hurried!
Having reached the back parlor, I trembled,
Alack! Now, with fear undissembled,
For Jacky all splattered with gore,
Lay flabby and flat on the floor!
A pestilent urchin,
Who stood much in need of promiscuous 'birchin'
With his tricks and his manners unstable,
He had taken to tipping the table,
(A rickety table, though heavy as lead),
And succeeded, the mischievous elf!
In tremendously tipping himself!
And then the big board like an unloosened rafter,
Came sundering, blundering, thundering after,
Gave his pert shanks a majestical rap,
And one fat little thumb,
Round as a plum,
Caught--as in spite,
And held on to it tight,
As a new patent trap!
But worst of all, he had thumped his head,
Thumped his head and maltreated his nose,
(Hence, the sanguine stains that disfigured his clothes!)
And yet after all the ado,
We managed to rescue, and bring him to,
On his pipe-like pegs
Of ridiculous legs,
To set him up in the general view,
No longer flecked by a crimson hue,
But, a trifle black and a trifle blue!
Behold me, once more in the garret!
This time with the door barred fast,
And locked by a rusty key,
(As if one could banish trouble,
By making one's fastenings double!
"Here's peace," quoth I, "at last!
One row, and a row of such degree,
Is surely enough 'till twilight!"
And so, 'neath the garret sky-light,
Again I pored o'er my "Barret"
("Barret on Drainage," I've said),
With calmer nerves and a cooler head;
Determined to compass the topic,
In a mode most philosophic,
And launching a sudden shot,
Lightning-swift, and fiery hot,
Through an article terse and satirical,
Those foolish savants to bring down,
Who with theories basely empirical,
Had so startled and shocked the town!
Ah! soon in order beautiful,
To a masterly logic dutiful,
My thoughts were ranged for fight;
I was making here and there,
A note on the fly-leaves bare,
When horribly higher and higher,
Uprose the shout of "Fire!"
In a monstrous dumb affright,
I hardly walked, but fell,
(As it seemed), from the garret's height,
(Though how, I could never tell!)
I alighted beneath to find
In the parlor a spark half out,
Which the feeblest puff of wind
From the chimney had blown about
But the children still would shout,
And dance, and prance, and bellow,
In a deafening, demonish rout
While as for their mother, low and limp,
She lay, in a faint, by the opened door
With her eighteen-monther, a restless imp,
Drawing and pawing o'er and o'er
The folds of her rumpled dress!
Somebody in years gone by,
Had pronounced her fainting pose
The ne plus ultra of loveliness,
As she lay like a sweet white rose;
But now! perchance, perchance,
I have lost my young romance,
For, unadmiring quite,
I gazed on the touching sight,
And (I'm a brute no doubt!)
But I let the syren lie.
Ah me, the vexatious,
Exasperations,
And tribulations,
Confusions,
Obtrusions,
And endless affrays,
Which marked with dark tracing that blackest of days!
Don't tell me that children are angels,
All fraught with pure heaven's evangels,
And trailing--what is it!--from some mystic star
Bright cloudlets of glory. I know what mine are,
Not a whit worse I'm sure than the rest of young "fry,"
Whose natures are thoughtless and spirits are high;
But as for your "angels!" all that's "in my eye!"
To enter again
On that morning of pain:
I should wretchedly blunder
In counting the number
Of times I was harried
(My thoughts all miscarried!)
By yells of shrill laughter
Or dread cries thereafter,
By accidents seen or invisible,
And mishaps high tragic, or risible;
Young Tommy three window-panes shattered,
And, of course, cut his head in the process,
And an old silver heir-loom
That oft held the rare bloom
Of vintages mellow and lusciously fine
From the banks of Moselle or the banks of the Rhine,
A tankard four centuries old and no less,
By wee Janet was battered,
Disgraced,
And defaced,
Till the Bacchus Cellini had graven thereon,
Was broken and wan,
And the sweep of the vine, and the curve of the grape,
Were twisted hopelessly out of shape.
Then Harry fell down in the cistern!
With yells to be heard for it mile,
And in striving to fish him out,
(For the boy is portly, puffy, and stout)
Back would he slip, and slip, and slip,
E'en from the cistern's utmost lip,
Until with a wrench swift-handed,
The human gudgeon was landed,
Who made with a ghastly smile
The half-inarticulate pledge,
That never more would he tempt the edge
Of well or cistern, fount or river,
Although upon earth he should dwell forever!
And lastly, Cornelia, aged five,
(I marvel the child is still alive!
Contrived in the subtlest, deftest way,
From the surgery shelf, to steal, in play,
A box of my pills cathartic;
Enough (if swallowed at once) to slay
A bear of the regions Arctic!
How many she took I cannot say,
But thereafter for many and many a day,
Supine the suffering maiden lay,
And I scarce believe that her blood has set
To the shore of health that is perfect, yet!
What is the moral of this, my masters?
(To you that are fathers, I mean,
Fathers, and students as well?)
Tis easy enough to tell),
Would you 'scape all household disasters?
And be cosy, sweet-tempered, serene?
Then never, never, never,
Make the absurd endeavor,
Because the sky's not bluish
And the wind seems somewhat shrewish,
To pen a young regiment in,
Of heirs to Adam's sin!
