Nothing to Eat | Page 8

dress,
Who spit where we walk as dirty a puddle
As bipeds
can make when their brains are 'a muddle,'
Do not prove the inside is
as dirty as they are,
Or else the gods help all the ladies who stay
there.
Why any prefer in a hotel to stay,
Instead of a house of their choosing

to own,
Is just to avoid all the trouble, they say,
That servants to
give us are certainly prone,
I'm sure if a tyranny more terrible prevails,

In Austria or other despotic domain,
My memory where most
certainly fails,
That servants and milliners over us gain,
Just here in
New York, and the more is the pity,
Where Wood is the Mogul that
governs the city.
Mrs. Merdle, having "Nibbled a Little" for two Hours at Dinner,
retireth from the Table unsatisfied.
"Impatient--oh yes--just the way with you men!
I never have time to half finish my eating
Ere Merdle is done; such a
fidget is then,
He'd starve me I think rather 'n miss of a meeting

Where brokers preside o'er the fate of the stocks,
As Pales presided
o'er shepherds and flocks.
Now while you are smoking--what nonsense and folly--
I'll go to my
room.--don't say No, for I must--
Put on a new dress, with assistance
of Molly,
And then with a little strong tea and a crust,
My strength I
may hope for a walk will be able
As far as the gate, and a very short
ride,
To give me a relish again for the table--
What else do we live
for in this world beside?"
The Poet Moralizeth--He Discourseth to those who Gorge and

Complain.
Oh! Kitty Malone--Mrs. Merdle 'tis now--
Was there ever on earth
than this, greater folly?
Still gorging, while groaning, and swearing a vow,
That yours is a
case of most sad melancholy.
With table that Croesus never had but might covet,
You live but to
eat and to eat 'cause you love it;
And yet while you swallow great
sirloins of meat
Complain like a beggar of nothing to eat.

He Discourseth of the Wherefore of Bachelorism.
"What else do we live for in this world beside?"
Alas! 't is the question of ten times a day,
That comes on the wind, or
that floats on the tide,
And creeps in the houses where men go to
pray.
What else do we live for than get such a wife
As this of the banker of
our faint description?
What else is the end of our fashionable life
From which men escape
as they would from conscription?
What else is the reason so few natives marry,
Than this, that
extravagance leads on to ruin?
It is because few men are able to carry
The load of this baking and
roasting and stewing,
Of buying and wasting extravagant meat,

Where women are dying of "nothing to eat;"
Where men in
corruption so rapidly tending,
In morals and wealth in bankruptcy
ending.
That forging and stealing and breaches of trust,
And ten thousand arts
of the confidence game,
And follies uncounted of men "on a bust,"

Are follies and crimes of this age to our shame,
Till angels who
witness the folly so wide
Extended from palace to farm-house and cot,

Might wonder if mortals life's objects forgot,
Or Merdle's position
is man's common lot?
He Discourseth of What some Mortals Live for.
"What else do they live for in this world beside?"
What else but for Kittys or one of the same,
Do mothers their
daughters at schools give the touch
That leaves them to live as a wife

but in name
While position and fashion they frantically clutch.
What else do they live for, our girls so refined,
So forward,
precocious, and gifted at ten
They are flirting and courting and things
of the kind,
That never came under our grandmother's ken.
At fifteen so dressed up, and hooped up, I ween,
They're mothers full
often before they're sixteen,
And fading and dowdy and sickly at
twenty,
With one boy in trowsers and two girls in laces

Complaining of starving while dying of plenty
The fate is of ladies in
fashionable places.
He Imploreth Mercy upon those condemned with fashionable folly to
Marry, and Illustrateth their Condition.
Now heaven in mercy be kind to the wretch,
Who marries for money
or fashion or folly;
He'd better accept of the noose of Jack Ketch

Than such a "help-meet;" or at once marry Dolly
The cook, or with
Bridget, the maid of the broom;
With one he'd be sure to get coffee
and meat,
And never hear whining of nothing to eat,
And 't other
would make up his bed and his room;
And if he was blest with a child
now and then,
As happens sometimes with your fashionable wives,

Who're coupled to bipeds, in nature called men,
He'd need no
insurance to warrant their lives;
And need no expense of a grand
"bridal tour,"
Or visit each season at "watering places,"
Where
fashion at people well known to be poor,
In money or station, will
make ugly faces;
Where women, though married, with roues will flirt;

Where widows, though widows in fresh sable weeds,
Spread nets
that entangle like old Nessus' shirt
And