Moral Emblems | Page 5

judgments spoke.
When to the music fingered well

The feet of children lightly fell,
The sire, who dozed by the decanters,

Started, and dreamed of misadventures.
The rotten brick decayed
to dust;
The iron was consumed by rust;
Each tabid and perverted
mansion
Hung in the article of declension.
So forty, fifty, sixty passed;
Until, when seventy came at last,
The
occupant of number three
Called friends to hold a jubilee.
Wild was
the night; the charging rack
Had forced the moon upon her back;

The wind piped up a naval ditty;
And the lamps winked through all
the city.
Before that house, where lights were shining,
Corpulent
feeders, grossly dining,
And jolly clamour, hum and rattle,
Fairly
outvoiced the tempest's battle.
As still his moistened lip he fingered,

The envious policeman lingered;
While far the infernal tempest
sped,
And shook the country folks in bed,
And tore the trees and
tossed the ships,

He lingered and he licked his lips.
Lo, from within,
a hush! the host
Briefly expressed the evening's toast;
And lo,
before the lips were dry,
The Deacon rising to reply!
'Here in this
house which once I built,
Papered and painted, carved and gilt,
And
out of which, to my content,
I netted seventy-five per cent.;
Here at
this board of jolly neighbours,
I reap the credit of my labours.

These were the days--I will say more -
These were the grand old days

of yore!
The builder laboured day and night;
He watched that every
brick was right:
The decent men their utmost did;
And the house rose--a pyramid!

These were the days, our provost knows,
When forty streets and
crescents rose,
The fruits of my creative noddle,
All more or less
upon a model,
Neat and commodious, cheap and dry,
A perfect
pleasure to the eye!
I found this quite a country quarter;
I leave it
solid lath and mortar.
In all, I was the single actor -
And am this
city's benefactor!
Since then, alas! both thing and name,
Shoddy
across the ocean came -
Shoddy that can the eye bewilder
And
makes me blush to meet a builder!
Had this good house, in frame or
fixture,
Been tempered by the least admixture
Of that discreditable
shoddy,
Should we to-day compound our toddy,
Or gaily marry
song and laughter
Below its sempiternal rafter?
Not so!' the Deacon
cried.
The mansion
Had marked his fatuous expansion.
The years were
full, the house was fated,
The rotten structure crepitated!
A moment, and the silent guests
Sat pallid as their dinner vests.
A
moment more and, root and branch,
That mansion fell in avalanche,

Story on story, floor on floor,
Roof, wall and window, joist and
door,
Dead weight of damnable disaster,
A cataclysm of lath and
plaster.
SILOAM DID NOT CHOOSE A SINNER -
ALL WERE NOT
BUILDERS AT THE DINNER.
0. END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, MORAL
EMBLEMS ***
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