Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/46

 They sat and sat, with pen behind the ear

Behind a heap of ledgers, frowned, reflected.

And how one storms and vents one’s rage; oh dear!

Should some audacious cit distract one’s labour.

Then sometimes in frock coat, white belt and sabre

One goes, one’s back quite into horse-shoes bent,

Oneself at one’s head office to present.

Here barristers and lawyers lived in clover,

These gave a crafty glance at one another,

Exchanging briefs and actions ten times over—

These being comic rolls,—my learned brother

Adjourns the sitting—terms were kept and cases

For jurisdiction summary, protracted

A year: o’er long bills clients pulled long faces,

For fees on palm leaves to a mite exacted.

Who pass in medicine their examinations

Put on a look of wisdom far superior,

With pins on parrots test innoculations,

With opera glasses, too, “work out” bacteria;

Pulses they feel from morn to dewy even,

The inward functions note, with ear to chest,

And then prescribe; would ours did so, by Heaven!

Their patients, green-room bon-bons of the best.

And there were crowds, too, of Proffesor gibbons

With gold-rimmed spectacles upon their noses;

From head to foot dry pedants in shrunk hoses,

You’d scarce distinguish ’em from Europe’s glib ’uns.

These buzzed round books, as filings round a magnet,

They fished them from the shipwreck with a bagnet,

Tugged many a book to bits, brought scissors, glue, an’

Hi! presto! from the old comes out a new ’un.

But hark! the shrilly professional wail: