The Winter's Tale to something like a pig-tale! Her sister auditory, All sitting round, with grave and learned faces, Of course, and clapped her at the proper places; But Happiness, alas! has blights of ill, With that peculiar voice Heard only from Hog's Norton throats and noses, Uprose on his hind legs old Farmer Grayley, Grunting this question for the club's digestion, "Do Dis's Wagon go from the Ould Bäaley?” ODE TO PERRY. THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN. "In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum,- fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity-slow and retentive in cases of deliberation never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark - never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service- - all things as it were with all men,-ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or Mahometan,- heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew,- in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn." PERRY'S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER. I. O! PATENT, Pen-inventing Perryan Perry! That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wan der, Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry, About the happy Fen, Untroubled for one pennyworth of pen, For which they chant thy praise all Britain through, From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh! II. Friend to all Author-kind Το carry it on jaunts, or more extensive Perrygrinations through the realms of Thought Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive, An Omnibus of intellectual sort! III. Modern Improvements in their course we feel; To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance. To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts, IV. In times bygone, when each man cut his quill, With little Perryan skill, What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade Appeared the writing implements home-made! What Pens were sliced, hewed, hacked, and haggled out, Slit or unslit, with many a various snout, Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby, Stumpy and stubby; Some capable of ladye-billets neat, Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk, And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark, Or smudge through some illegible receipt; Others in florid caligraphic plans, Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans! To try V. in any common inkstands, then, With all their miscellaneous stocks, To find a decent pen, Was like a dip into a lucky box: You drew, and got one very curly, And split like endive in some hurly-burly; The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade; The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made; The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail, Turned upwards, like a rabbit's tail; And last, not least, by way of a relief, A stump that Master Richard, James, or John, Had tried his candle-cookery upon, Making "roast-beef!" VI Not so thy Perryan Pens! True to their M's and N's, They do not with a whizzing zigzag split, Huge fullstop blots, Where even semicolons were unfit. They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge In sable sludge Nay, bought at proper "Patent Perryan" shops, They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops; Compose both prose and verse, the sad or For when the Editor, whose pains compile The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile, Vaunteth his articles, not women's, men's, But lays "by the most celebrated Pens," What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry? VII. Pleasant they are to feel! So firm! so flexible! composed of steel Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death |