The thing was strange.'
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.

CE Brock

1895

The little fools seemed only born

And hatched for nothing but a hatchment!

Whene'er they launched-oh, sight of wonder!

Like fires the water "got them under!"

No woman ever gave their lucks

A better chance than Mrs. Bond did;

At last quite out of heart and ducks,

She gave her pond up, and desponded; For Death among the water-lilies,

Cried "Duc ad me" to all her dillies!

But though resolved to breed no more,

She brooded often on this riddle

Alas! 'twas darker than before!

At last about the summer's middle, What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did, To clear the matter up the Sun did!

The thirsty Sirius, dog-like, drank

So deep, his furious tongue to cool,

The shallow waters sank and sank,

And lo, from out the wasted pool,

Too hot to hold them any longer,
There crawled some eels as big as conger!

I wish all folks would look a bit,

In such a case below the surface ;

And when the eels were caught and split

By Mrs. Bond, just think of her face, In each inside at once to spy

A duckling turned to giblet-pie !

The sight at once explained the case,
Making the Dame look rather silly,

The tenants of that Eely Place

Had found the way to Pick a dilly,

And so, by under-water suction,

Had wrought the little ducks' abduction.

NE day, as I was going by

That part of Holborn christened High,

I heard a loud and sudden cry

That chill'd my very blood;

And lo! from out a dirty alley,
Where pigs and Irish wont to rally,

I saw a crazy woman sally,

Bedaub'd with grease and mud.

She turn'd her East, she turn'd her West,
Staring like Pythoness possest,

With streaming hair and heaving breast,
As one stark mad with grief.

This way and that she wildly ran,
Jostling with woman and with man-

Her right hand held a frying pan,

The left a lump of beef.

At last her frenzy seem'd to reach
A point just capable of speech,
And with a tone almost a screech,

As wild as ocean birds,

Or female Ranter mov'd to preach,

"Oh Lord! oh dear, my heart will break, I shall go

stick stark staring wild!

Has ever a one seen anything about the streets like

a crying lost-looking child?

Lawk help me, I don't know where to look, or to run,

if I only knew which way

A child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a needle in a bottle of hay.

I am all in a quiver-get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty M'Nab!