Page:A Selection of Original Songs, Scraps, Etc., by Ned Farmer (3rd ed.).djvu/127



For such encounters; and 'twas plain The meeting should be call'd again,
 * To reconsider

His proposition: "For," said he, "My children fatherless may be—
 * My wife a 'widder.'"

Thus did his martial soul recoil; But only, mark ye, for a while;
 * For Courage now

Came to the rescue, and exclaimed, "Shall Crump of Nettleford be shamed,
 * Or break his vow?"

"Rather than that," brave Crump replies, "Come all the ghosts before my eyes
 * That ever haunted

This wicked world since it was made; I say again. Let all parade,
 * I'll not be daunted."

To the wife of his bosom, he next wends his way, With a kind of misgiving as to what she might say, For Matilda, his, as often we find, Had a way, as she called it, of "speaking her mind!"
 * When she saw with affright,
 * That her husband looked white,

She said, "Anthony Crump, you have been and got 'tight,'"