teaplant with five black leaves, and one green. 
As for hollyhocks at the cottage doors, and honeysuckles and jasmines,
      you may go and whistle;
But the Tailor’s front garden grows two cabbages, a dock, a ha’porth
      of pennyroyal, two dandelions, and a thistle! 
There are three small orchards—­Mr. Busby’s the school-master’s is the
      chief—­
With two pear trees that don’t bear; one plum, and an apple that every
      year is stripped by a thief. 
There’s another small day-school too, kept by the respectable
      Mrs. Gaby,
A select establishment for six little boys, and one big, and four
      little girls and a baby;
There’s a rectory with pointed gables and strange odd chimneys that
      never smokes,
For the Rector don’t live on his living like other Christian sort of
      folks;
There’s a barber’s once a week well filled with rough black-bearded,
      shock-headed churls,
And a window with two feminine men’s heads, and two masculine ladies
      in false curls;
There’s a butcher’s, and a carpenter’s, and a plumber’s, and a small
      greengrocer’s, and a baker,
But he won’t bake on a Sunday; and there’s a sexton that’s a coal
      merchant besides, and an undertaker;
And a toyshop, but not a whole one, for a village can’t compare with
      the London shops;
One window sells drums, dolls, kites, carts, bats, Clout’s balls, and
      the other sells malt and hops,
And Mrs. Brown in domestic economy not to be a bit behind her betters,
Lets her house to a milliner, a watchmaker, a rat-catcher, a cobbler,
      lives in it herself, and it’s the post-office for letters. 
Now I’ve gone through all the village—­ay, from end to end, save and
      except one more house,
But I haven’t come to that—­and I hope I never shall—­and that’s the
      Village Poor House!

A PUBLIC DINNER.

    “Sit down and fall to, said the Barmecide.”
    Arabian Nights.

At seven you just nick it,
Give card—­get wine ticket;
Walk round through the Babel,
From table to table,
To find—­a hard matter—­
Your name in a platter;
Your wish was to sit by
Your friend Mr. Whitby,
But stewards’ assistance
Has placed you at distance,
And, thanks to arrangers,
You sit amongst strangers,
But too late for mending;
Twelve sticks come attending
A stick of a Chairman,
A little dark spare man,
With bald, shining nob,
’Mid committee swell-mob;
In short, a short figure,—­
You thought the Duke bigger. 
Then silence is wanted,
Non Nobis is chanted;
Then Chairman reads letter,
The Duke’s a regretter,
A promise to break it,
But chair, he can’t take it;
Is grieved to be from us,
But sends friend Sir Thomas,
And what is far better,
A cheque in the letter. 
Hear! hear! and a clatter,
And there ends the matter.