Indicative of human habits,
All burrowing in the head like rabbits.
Thus Veneration, he made known,
Had got a lodging at the Crown:
And Music (see Deville's example),
A set of chambers in the Temple:
That Language taught the tongues close by,
And took in pupils thro' the eye,
Close by his neighbour Computation,
Who taught the eyebrows numeration.
The science thus-to speak in fit
Terms-having struggled from its nit,
Was seiz'd on by a swarm of Scotchmen,
Those scientifical hotch-potch men,
Who have at least a penny dip
And wallop in all doctorship,
Just as in making broth they smatter
By bobbing twenty things in water:
These men, I say, make quick appliance
And close, to phrenologic science;
For of all learned themes whatever,
That schools and colleges deliver,
There's none they love so near the bodles,
As analyzing their own noddles;
Thus in a trice each northern blockhead
Had got his fingers in his shock head,
And of his bumps was babbling yet worse
Than poor Miss Capulet's dry wet-nurse;
Till having been sufficient rangers
Of their own heads, they took to strangers',
And found in Presbyterians' polls
The things they hated in their souls;
For Presbyterians hear with passion
Of organs join'd with veneration.
No kind there was of human pumpkin,
But at its bumps it had a bumpkin;
Down to the very lowest gullion,
And oiliest scull of oily scullion.
No great man died but this they did do,
They begg'd his cranium of his widow;
No murderer died by law disaster,
But they took off his sconce in plaster;
For thereon they could show depending,
"The head and front of his offending,"
How that his philanthropic bump
Was master'd by a baser lump;
For every bump (these wags insist)
Has its direct antagonist,
Each striving stoutly to prevail,
Like horses knotted tail to tail;
And many a stiff and sturdy battle
Occurs between these adverse cattle,
The secret cause, beyond all question,
Of aches ascribed to indigestion,-
Whereas 'tis but two knobby rivals
Tugging together like sheer devils,
Till one gets mastery good or sinister,
And comes in like a new prime-minister.
Each bias in some master node is:-
What takes M'Adam where a road is,
To hammer little pebbles less?
His organ of destructiveness:
What makes great Joseph so encumber
Debate? a lumping lump of Number:
Or Malthus rail at babies so?
The smallness of his Philopro-
What severs man and wife? a simple
Defect of the Adhesive pimple:
Or makes weak women go astray?
Their bumps are more in fault than they.
These facts being found and set in order
By grave M.D.'s beyond the Border,
To make them for some months eternal,
Were enter'd monthly in a journal,
That many a northern sage still writes in,
And throws his little Northern Lights in,
And proves and proves about the phrenos,
A great deal more than I or he knows.
A SAILOR'S APOLOGY FOR BOW-LEGS. 371
How Music suffers, par exemple,
By wearing tight hats round the temple;
What ills great boxers have to fear
From blisters put behind the ear:
And how a porter's Veneration
Is hurt by porter's occupation:
Whether shillelaghs in reality
May deaden Individuality :
Or tongs and poker be creative
Of alterations in the Amative:
If falls from scaffolds make us less
Inclin'd to all Constructiveness:
With more such matters, all applying
To heads-and therefore headifying.
A SAILOR'S APOLOGY FOR BOW-LEGS.
HERE'S some is born with their straight legs by
And some is born with bow-legs from the
And some that should have grow'd a good deal straighter,
But they were badly nurs'd,
And set, you see, like Bacchus, with their pegs
Astride of casks and kegs:
I've got myself a sort of bow to larboard,
And starboard,
And this is what it was that warp'd my legs.
'Twas all along of Poll, as I may say,
That foul'd my cable when I ought to slip;
But on the tenth of May,
When I gets under weigh,
Down there in Hartfordshire, to join my ship,
I sees the mail
The only one there was to make the trip.
Well-I gives chase,
But as she run
Two knots to one,
There warn't no use in keeping on the race!
A SAILOR'S APOLOGY FOR BOW-LEGS.
Well-casting round about, what next to try on,
And how to spin,
I spies an ensign with a Bloody Lion,
And bears away to leeward for the inn,
Beats round the gable,
And fetches up before the coach-horse stable :
Well-there they stand, four kickers in a row,
And so
I just makes free to cut a brown 'un's cable.
But riding isn't in a seaman's natur—
So I whips out a toughish end of yarn,
And gets a kind of sort of a land-waiter
To splice me, heel to heel,
Under the she-mare's keel,
And off I goes, and leaves the inn a-starn!
My eyes! how she did pitch!
And wouldn't keep her own to go in no line,
Tho' I kept bowsing, bowsing at her bow-line,
But always making leeway to the ditch,
And yaw'd her head about all sorts of ways,
The devil sink the craft!
And wasn't she trimendus slack in stays!
We couldn't, no how, keep the inn abaft!
Well-I suppose
We hadn't run a knot—or much beyond—
(What will you have on it ?)—but off she goes,
Up to her bends in a fresh-water pond!
There I am!-all a-back!
So I looks forward for her bridle-gears,
To heave her head round on the t'other track;
But when I starts,
And goes away right over by the ears!
Whose legs, like mine, you know, were in the bilboes,
But trim myself upright for bringing-to,
And square his yard-arms, and brace up his elbows,
In rig all snug and clever,
Just while his craft was taking in her water?
I didn't like my burth tho', howsomdever,
Because the yarn, you see, kept getting taughter,-
Says I-I wish this job was rayther shorter !
The chase had gain'd a mile
A-head, and still the she-mare stood a-drinking:
Now, all the while
Her body didn't take of course to shrinking.
Says I, she's letting out her reefs, I'm thinking,—
And so she swell'd, and swell'd,
And yet the tackle held,
'Till both my legs began to bend like winkin.
My eyes! but she took in enough to founder!
And there's my timbers straining every bit,
Ready to split,
And her tarnation hull a-growing rounder!
Well, there-off Hartford Ness,
We lay both lash'd and water-logg'd together,
And can't contrive a signal of distress;
Thinks I, we must ride out this here foul weather,
Tho' sick of riding out-and nothing less;
When, looking round, I sees a man a-starn :-
Hollo! says I, come underneath her quarter!—
And hands him out my knife to cut the yarn.
So I gets off, and lands upon the road,
And leaves the she-mare to her own concarn,
A-standing by the water.
If I get on another, I'll be blowed!—
And that's the way, you see, my legs got bow'd!
Scheherazade immediately began the following story.
LI BEN ALI (did you never read
His wond'rous acts that chronicles relate,How there was one in pity might exceed The sack of Troy?) Magnificent he sate Upon the throne of greatness-great indeed,
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