And then with no more manners than a bear, His hat upon his head, no matter how, And then that house of prayer, the parish church, Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her, She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream; As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder, Had come within his bony arms to fold her. "Lorenzo!”—“Ellen!"—then came "Sir!" and "Madam!” They tried to speak, but hammered at each word, As if it were a flint for great MacAdam; Such broken English never else was heard, They shook like jellies made without a due And proper share of common joiner's glue. "Ellen! I'm come-to bid you-fare-farewell” They thus began to fight their verbal duel; "Since some more hap-hap-happy man must dwell—” -Loren-Lorenzo !—cru—cru "Alas cru-cru-cruel!” For so they split their words like grits for gruel. "There—take it, Madam-take it back I crave, Your art has last enticed into your fetter- Send them to South-or Children-you had better— "Take them-pray take them-I resign them quite! I should have led you-by your leave and pardon- "And here's the birth-day ring-nor man nor devil Absolved of each dissevered tie and band— And so farewell, till Time's eternal sickle Shall reap our lives; in this, or foreign land Some other may be found for truth to stickle Almost as fair-and not so false and fickle!" And there he ceased: as truly it was time, For of the various themes that left his mouth, One half surpassed her intellectual climb: She knew no more than the old Hill of Howth Kit North, was just as strange to her as South, She gathered from the simple outward fact Though quite unconsious of his cause to act So like Othello, with his face unblacked; "Alas!" she sobbed, "your cruel course I see These faded charms no longer can attract; 'I, false !-unjust Lorenzo !—and to you! So long as this poor throbbing heart is mine- True as the tide to 'yonder blessed moon' !" And as she spoke, she pointed through the window, And Todd and Sturch's cheapest of all shops "The Moon!" he cried, and an electric spasm |