M'Grab; when, to the great joy of Deputy Doublechin, the miserable drone-pipe of this leatherbrained, leaden-hearted, blue-nosed, frost-bitten, starved nibbler of a Scotch kail-yard, was quickly drowned in the sonorous double-bass of our saltwater Belisarius.
My foes were my country's, my messmates the brave.
My home was the deck, and my path the green wave;
My musick, loud winds, when the tempest rose high--
I sail'd with bold Nelson, and heard his last sigh!
His spirit had fled--we gaz'd on the dead--
The sternest of hearts bow'd with sorrow, and bled.
As o'er the deep waters mov'd slowly his bier,
What victory, thought we, was ever so dear?
Far Egypt's hot sands have long since quench'd my
To these rolling orbs what is sunshine or night?
But the full blaze of glory that beam'd on thy bay,
Trafalgar I still pours on their darkness the day.
An ominous tap at the window--the "White Serjeant's!" invited Geordie to a tête-à-tête with a singed sheep's head, and the additional treat of a curtain-lecture, not on political but domestic economy, illustrated with sharp etchings by Mrs. M'Sneeshing's nails, of which his physiognomy had occasionally exhibited proof impressions! To his modern Athenian (!) broad brogue, raised in defiance of the applauding populace outside, responded the polite inquiry, "_Does your mother know you're out?_" * and other classical interrogatories. The return of Mr. Bosky was a signal for cheerfulness, mingled with deeper feelings; during which were not forgotten, "Old England's wooden walls?" and "Peace to the souls of the heroes!"
* Certain cant phrases strike by their odd sound and apposite allusion.
"Hookey!" &c. &c. are terms that metaphorically imply something comical Yet oblivion, following in the march of time, shall cast its shadows over their mysterious meanings. On "Hookey!" the bewildered scholiast of future ages will hang every possible interpretation but the right one; with "Blow me tight!" he will give a loose to conjecture; and oft to Heaven will he roll his queer eye, the query to answer, "Who are you?"
|And hail to the living," exclaimed Lieutenant O'Larry, the Trim of the Cloth Quarter,--"To them give we a trophy, time enough for a tomb!" And having knocked out the ashes of his pipe, he tuned it, and (beating time with his wooden leg) woke our enthusiasm with