Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/608

 . 23, 1861.] children. I rather like Sir Habbakuk Zephaniah, and if he asks me to dinner I shall go.

And now for the reply. Up riseth James Lacquerby Veneer. Not bad, the struggle to speak—not bad, the hydraulic business; can you see whether there is really water there?—touched his eyes slily with a drop of champagne, perhaps—an artist is known in trifles, as I have said.

Here we do want the penny-a-liner. Here really is paragraph talk. Penny-a-lining, in excelsis, is the oratory of such as Lacquerby Veneer. Come along, Signor Lorenzo; we have had lunch enough, and we’ll have a cigar in the park. You shall read the speech to-morrow—I saw a man taking notes, and I shall have a copy, printed on satin paper, and tied up with the cards of the happy couple; bless you, Veneer will not throw away a chance of getting himself talked about. You shall have my copy; I do not mean to insert it in my album of reminiscences. I keep that for cards of invitation to the banquets of more awful swells than Veneer. Come along.

Spoke well—thanks, I have a light—spoke well? Certainly. Very neat indeed. I suspect the Reverend Mewler gave him some hints. “Five-and-twenty years tossing on the stormy ocean of life, yet ever anchored to the hearthstone of a happy home. Would gladly have spared his wife all the troubles, and have only shared the joys with her, but she was a strict arithmetician, and insisted on the fulfilment of her bargain. Ever the first she was to see the haven of hope, but she never allowed the ship to drift. Wished every man such a wife, and had provided two such wives for two happy men, whenever they should descend from the skies and claim them. If his son were but half as fortunate as himself, he should feel his own happiness doubled. Life was not in the sear and yellow leaf; but honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,—those he rejoiced to say were his, and he would not say that he had deserved them, but would say that the dear partner of his life had done so. (Here he cried, I think.) They had never had a dispute, far less a quarrel, and if another five-and-twenty years should be granted them, the only increase of happiness he could desire for that period would be in the prattle of a third generation of Lacquerby Veneers.” Yes, my boy, he spoke very well, and you may give me another cigar, as this don’t draw—it’s one of those I keep, in a lovely embroidered case, for friends who call.

Yes, that might fairly be called an Electrotype Wedding. There are a good many such festivals. But they bear no proportion at all to the thousands of weddings where the real Gold and Silver come out, and where the words which are as free to hollow humbugs as to honest men express the real feelings of the heart. God bless the Gold and Silver, and multiply it.

S. B.

a Temple of the Toes,

Where twirl’d the passionate Wili,

I saw full many a market rose,

And sigh’d for my village lily.

With cynical Adrian then I took flight

To that old dead city whose carol

Bursts out like a reveller’s loud in the night,

As he sits astride his barrel.

We two were bound the Alps to scale,

Up the rock-reflecting river;

Old times blew thro’ me like a gale,

And kept my thoughts in a quiver.

Hawking ruin, wood-slope, and vine,

Reel’d silver-laced under my vision:

And into me pass’d, with the green-eyed wine

Knocking hard at my head for admission.

I held the village lily cheap,

And the dream around her idle;

Lo, quietly as I lay to sleep,

The bells led me off to a bridal.

My bride wore the hood of a Beguine,

And mine was the foot to falter;

Three cowl’d monks, rat-eyed, were seen;

The Cross was of bones o’er the altar.

The Cross was of bones; the priest that read,

A spectacled necromancer:

But at the fourth word, the bride I led,

Changed to an Opera dancer.

A young ballet beauty who perk’d in her place,

A darling of pink and spangles;

One fair foot level with her face,

And the hearts of men at her ancles.

She whirl’d, she twirl’d; the mock-priest grinn’d,

And quickly his mask unriddled;

Twas Adrian! loud his old laughter dinn’d;

Then he seized a fiddle, and fiddled.

He fiddled, he glow’d with the bottomless fire,

Like Sathanas in feature:

All thro’ me he fiddled a wolfish desire

To dance with that bright creature.

And gathering courage I said to my soul,

Throttle the thing that hinders!

When the three cowl’d monks, from black as coal,

Wax’d hot as furnace-cinders.

They caught her up, twirling; they leapt betweenwhiles:

The fiddler flicker’d with laughter:

Profanely they flew down the awful aisles!

Where I went sliding after.

Down the awful aisles, by the fretted walls,

Beneath the Gothic arches:—

King Skull, in the black confessionals,

Sat rub-a-dub-dubbing his marches.

Then the silent cold stone warriors frown’d,

The pictured saints strode forward:

A whirlwind swept them from holy ground;

A tempest puff’d them nor’ward.