The Bab Ballads, vol 3 | Page 6

to confine their charitable exertions to collecting money from
wealthier people,
And looked upon individuals of the former class as
ecclesiastical hawks;
He used to say that he would no more think of

interfering with his priest's robes than with his church or his steeple,

And that he did not consider his soul imperilled because somebody
over whom he had no influence whatever, chose to dress himself up
like an exaggerated GUY FAWKES.
This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably shameless
That he
actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middleaged sister,
by the name of BIGGS.
She was a rather attractive widow, whose life
as such had always been particularly blameless;
Her first husband had
left her a secure but moderate competence, owing to some fortunate
speculations in the matter of figs.
She was an excellent person in every way--and won the respect even of
MRS. GRUNDY,
She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn't have
wasted a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor.
She was just as
strict as he was lax in her observance of Sunday, And being a good
economist, and charitable besides, she took all the bones and cold
potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends (when she had quite
done with them), and made them into an excellent soup for the
deserving poor.
I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKE--that outcast of society,

And when respectable brothers who were fond of her began to look
dubious and to cough,
She would say, "Oh, my friends, it's because I
hope to bring this poor benighted soul back to virtue and propriety,

And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults, was
uncommonly well off.
And when MR. BLAKE'S dissipated friends called his attention to the
frown or the pout of her,
Whenever he did anything which appeared
to her to savour of an unmentionable place,
He would say that "she
would be a very decent old girl when all that nonsense was knocked out
of her,"
And his method of knocking it out of her is one that covered
him with disgrace.
She was fond of going to church services four times every Sunday, and,

four or five times in the week, and never seemed to pall of them, So he
hunted out all the churches within a convenient distance that had
services at different hours, so to speak;
And when he had married her
he positively insisted upon their going to all of them,
So they
contrived to do about twelve churches every Sunday, and, if they had
luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in the course of the week.
She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously into the plate,
and she liked to see them stand out rather conspicuously against the
commonplace half-crowns and shillings,
So he took her to all the
charity sermons, and if by any extraordinary chance there wasn't a
charity sermon anywhere, he would drop a couple of sovereigns (one
for him and one for her) into the poor-box at the door;
And as he
always deducted the sums thus given in charity from the housekeeping
money, and the money he allowed her for her bonnets and frillings,

She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it to interfere
with your personal luxuries, becomes an intolerable bore.
On Sundays she was always melancholy and anything but good society,
For that day in her household was a day of sighings and sobbings and
wringing of hands and shaking of heads:
She wouldn't hear of a
button being sewn on a glove, because it was a work neither of
necessity nor of piety,
And strictly prohibited her servants from
amusing themselves, or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the
drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the parlour
dinner, waiting generally on the family, and making the beds.
But
BLAKE even went further than that, and said that people should do
their own works of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a
menial situation,
So he wouldn't allow his servants to do so much as
even answer a bell. Here he is making his wife carry up the water for
her bath to the second floor, much against her inclination,--
And why
in the world the gentleman who illustrates these ballads has put him in
a cocked hat is more than I can tell.
After about three months of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with
the rough of it,
(Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes

was not her notion of connubial bliss),
MRS. BLAKE began to find
that she had pretty nearly had enough of it, And came, in course of time,
to think that BLAKE'S own original line of conduct wasn't so much
amiss.
And now that wicked person--that detestable sinner ("BELIAL
BLAKE" his friends and well-wishers call him for his atrocities),
And
his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian brothers dislike