Swift flew the summons,-it was life or death!
And in as short a time as he could race it,
Came Doctor Puddicome as short of breath,

To try his Latin charms against Hic acet.

He took a seat beside the patient's bed,

Saw tongue-felt pulse-examined the bad cheek,— Poked, stroked, pinch'd, kneaded it-hemm'd-shook his head

Took a long solemn pause the cause to seek,

(Thinking, it seem'd, in Greek,)

Then ask'd-'twas Christmas-" Had he eaten grass,
Or greens and if the cook was so improper

To boil them up with copper,

Or farthings made of brass;

Or if he drank his Hock from dark green glass,
Or dined at City Festivals, whereat

There's turtle, and green fat?"

To all of which, with serious tone of woe,
Poor Simpson answered "No."

Indeed he might have said in form auricular,
Supposing Puddicome had been a monk—
He had not eaten (he had only drunk)
Of any thing "Particular."

The Doctor was at fault;

A thing so new quite brought him to a halt.
Cases of other colours came in crowds,

He could have found their remedy, and soon;
But green-it sent him up among the clouds,
As if he had gone up with Green's balloon!
Black with Black Jaundice he had seen the skin:
From Yellow Jaundice yellow,

From saffron tints to sallow;

Then retrospective memory lugg'd in

Old Purple Face, the Host at Kentish Town—
East Indians, without number,

He knew familiarly, by heat done Brown,

From tan to a burnt umber,

Ev'n those eruptions he had never seen
Of which the Caledonian Poet spoke,
As "rashes growing green!"
"Pooh! pooh! a rash grow green!

Nothing of course but a broad Scottish joke!"
Then as to flaming visages, for those

The Scarlet Fever answer'd, or the Rose-
But verdant that was quite a novel stroke!
Men turn'd to blue, by Cholera's last stage,

In common practice he had really seen;
But green-he was too old, and grave, and sage,'
To think of the last stage to Turnham Green!

So matters stood in-doors-meanwhile without,
Growing in going like all other rumours,
The modern miracle was buzz'd about,
By People of all humours,

Native or foreign in their dialecticals;
Till all the neighbourhood, as if their noses
Had taken the odd gross from little Moses,
Seem'd looking thro' green spectacles.

66

"Green faces!" so they all began to comment-
Yes-opposite to Druggist's lighted shops,
But that's a flying colour-never stops-
A bottle-green that's vanished in a moment.
Green! nothing of the sort occurs to mind,
Nothing at all to match the present piece;

Jack in the Green has nothing of the kind—
Green-grocers are not green-nor yet green geese!"
The oldest Supercargoes of Old Sailors

Of such a case had never heard,

From Emerald Isle to Cape de Verd;

"Or Greenland!" cried the whalers.

All tongues were full of the Green man, and still
They could not make him out, with all their skill;
No soul could shape the matter, head or tail-
But truth steps in where all conjectures fail.

A long half-hour, in needless puzzle,

Our Galen's cane had rubbed against his muzzle:

He thought, and thought, and thought, and thought, and

thought

And still it came to nought,

When up rush'd Betty, loudest of Town Criers,

"Lord, Ma'am, the new Police is at the door!

It's B, ma'am, Twenty-four,—

As brought home Mr. S. to Austin Friars,

And says there's nothing but a simple case—
He got that 'ere green face

By sleeping in the kennel near the Dyer's!"

BEN BLUFF.

A PATHETIC BALLAD.

"Pshaw, you are not on a whaling voyage, where everything that offers is game."-THE PILOT.

B

EN BLUFF was a whaler, and many a day

Had chased the huge fish about Baffin's old Bay,
But time brought a change his diversion to spoil,
And that was when Gas took the shine out of
Oil.

He turn'd up his nose at the fumes of the Coke,
And swore the whole scheme was a bottle of smoke :
As to London he briefly delivered his mind,
"Sparma-city," said he-but the City declined.

So Ben cut his line in a sort of a huff,

As soon as his whales had brought profits enough,
And hard by the Docks settled down for his life,
But, true to his text, went to Wales for a wife.

A big one she was, without figure or waist,
More bulky than lovely, but that was his taste;
In fat she was lapp'd from her sole to her crown,
And, turn'd into oil, would have lighted a town.

But Ben like a Whaler was charm'd with the match,
And thought, very truly, his spouse a great catch;
A flesh-and-blood emblem of Plenty and Peace,
And would not have changed her for Helen of Greece.

For Greenland was green in his memory still;
He'd quitted his trade, but retain'd the good-will;
And often, when soften'd by bumbo and flip,
Would cry-till he blubber'd-about his old ship.

No craft like the Grampus could work through a floe, What knots she could run, and what tons she could stow. And then that rich smell he preferr'd to the rose,

By just nosing the whole without holding his nose !

Now Ben he resolved, one fine Saturday night,

A snug Arctic Circle of friends to invite,

Old Tars in the trade, who related old tales,

And drank, and blew clouds that were "very like whales."

Of course with their grog there was plenty of chat,
Of canting, and flinching, and cutting up fat;
And how Gun Harpoons into fashion had got,
And if they were meant for the Gun-whale or not?

At last they retired, and left Ben to his rest,
By fancies cetaceous, and drink, well possess'd,
When, lo! as he lay by his partner in bed,
He heard something blow through two holes in its head.

"A start!" mutter'd Ben, in the Grampus afloat, And made but one jump from the deck to the boat! "Huzza! pull away for the blubber and bone

I look on that whale as already my own!"

Then groping about by the light of the moon,
He soon laid his hand on his trusty harpoon;
A moment he poised it, to send it more pat,
And then made a plunge to imbed it in fat!

"Starn all !" he sang out, "as you care for your livesStarn all, as you hope to return to your wives

Stand by for the flurry! she throws up the foam!
Well done, my old iron, I've sent you right home!"

And scarce had he spoken, when lo! bolt upright
The Leviathan rose in a great sheet of white,
And swiftly advanced for a fathom or two,
As only a fish out of water could do.

"Starn all !" echoed Ben, with a movement aback, But too slow to escape from the creature's attack;

If flippers it had, they were furnish'd with nails,—
"You willin, I'll teach you that Women an't Whales!"

"Avast!" shouted Ben, with a sort of a screech,

"I've heard a Whale spouting, but here is a speech!"

'

'A-spouting, indeed !-very pretty," said she;

"But it's you I'll blow up, not the froth of the sea!

"To go to pretend to take me for a fish!
You great Polar Bear-but I know what you wish—
You're sick of a wife, that your hankering baulks,
You want to go back to some young Esquimax!"

"O dearest," cried Ben, "frighten'd out of his life, "Don't think I would go for to murder a wife I must long have bewailed"—" But she only cried Stuff! Don't name it, you brute, you've be-whaled me enough!"

"Lord, Polly!" said Ben, "such a deed could I do? I'd rather have murder'd all Wapping than you! Come, forgive what is passed." "O you monster!

cried,

"It was none of your fault that it passed of one side!"

However, at last she inclined to forgive;

“But, Ben, take this warning as long as you live— If the love of harpooning so strong must prevail, Take a whale for a wife, not a wife for a whale."

she

SALLY SIMPKIN'S LAMENT;

OR, JOHN JONES'S KIT-CAT-ASTROPHE,

"He left his body to the sea,

And made a shark his legatee."

BRYAN AND PERENNE,

H! what is that comes gliding in,

And quite in middling haste?
It is the picture of my Jones,
And painted to the waist.

"It is not painted to the life,

For where's the trowsers blue?