That Admiral, Lady, and Hairy-faced man

May say what they please, and may do what they can ;

But one thing seems remarkably clear,

They may die to-morrow, or live till next year,-
But wherever they live, or whenever they die,
They'll never get quit of young Hamilton Tighe!

The When, the Where,- and the How of the

succeeding narrative speak for themselves.

161

THE WITCHES' FROLIC.

[Scene, the "Snuggery" at Tappington. - Grandpapa in a high-backed cane-bottomed elbow-chair of carved walnut-tree, dozing; his nose at an angle of forty-five degrees,—his thumbs slowly perform the rotatory motion described by lexicographers as "twiddling." - The "Hope of the family" astride on a walking-stick, with burnt-cork mustachios, and a pheasant's tail pinned in his cap, solaceth himself with martial music. Roused by a strain of surpassing dissonance, Grandpapa loquitur.]

COME hither, come hither, my little boy Ned!
Come hither unto my knee-

I cannot away with that horrible din,

That sixpenny drum, and that trumpet of tin.
Oh, better to wander frank and free
Through the Fair of good Saint Bartlemy,
Than list to such awful minstrelsie.
Now lay, little Ned, those nuisances by,
And I'll rede ye a lay of Grammarye.

[Grandpapa riseth, yawneth like the crater of an extinct volcano, proceedeth slowly to the window, and apostrophizeth the Abbey in the distance.]

I love thy tower, Grey Ruin,

I joy thy form to see,
Though reft of all,

Cell, cloister, and hall,

Nothing is left save a tottering wall,

That, awfully grand and darkly dull,
Threaten'd to fall and demolish my skull,
As, ages ago, I wander'd along

Careless thy grass-grown courts among,
In sky-blue jacket and trowsers laced,
The latter uncommonly short in the waist.
Thou art dearer to me, thou Ruin grey,
Than the Squire's verandah over the way;
And fairer, I ween,

The ivy sheen

That thy mouldering turret binds,

Than the Alderman's house about half a mile off,
With the green Venetian blinds.

Full many a tale would my Grandam tell,
In many a bygone day,

Of darksome deeds, which of old befell

In thee, thou Ruin grey !

And I the readiest ear would lend,

And stare like frighten'd pig;

While my Grandfather's hair would have stood

end,

Had he not worn a wig.

One tale I remember of mickle dread-
Now lithe and listen, my little boy Ned!

*

Thou mayest have read, my little boy Ned,
Though thy mother thine idlesse blames,
In Doctor Goldsmith's history book,

Of a gentleman called King James,

In quilted doublet, and great trunk breeches,
Who held in abhorrence tobacco and witches.