pen
  Is just a tickler!—­and the world, no doubt,
  Is better with it than it was without. 
  What? thirteen ladies—­Jumping Jove! we know
  Them nearly all!—­who gamble at a low
  And very shocking game of cards called “draw”! 
  O cracky, how they’ll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw! 
  Let’s see what else (wife snores).  Well, I’ll be blest! 
  A woman doesn’t understand a jest. 
  Hello!  What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds
  To take a fling at me, condemn him! (reads): 
  Tom Jonesmith—­my name’s Thomas, vulgar cad!—­Of
  the new Shavings Bank—­the man’s gone mad! 
  That’s libelous; I’ll have him up for that—­Has
  had his corns cut.  Devil take the rat! 
  What business is ’t of his, I’d like to know? 
  He didn’t have to cut them.  Gods! what low
  And scurril things our papers have become! 
  You skim their contents and you get but scum. 
  Here, Mary, (waking wife) I’ve been attacked
  In this vile sheet.  By Jove, it is a fact!

WIFE (reading it):  How wicked!  Who do you
Suppose ’t was wrote it?

                           JONESMITH:  Who? why, who
  But Grip, the so-called funny man—­he wrote
  Me up because I’d not discount his note.
  (Blushes like sunset at the hideous lie—­
  He’ll think of one that’s better by and by—­
  Throws down the paper on the floor, and treads
  A lively measure on it—­kicks the shreds
  And patches all about the room, and still
  Performs his jig with unabated will.)

WIFE (warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn): 
Dear, do be careful of that second corn.

  STANLEY. 
  Noting some great man’s composition vile: 
  A head of wisdom and a heart of guile,
  A will to conquer and a soul to dare,
  Joined to the manners of a dancing bear,
  Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey
  Of various Nature’s compensating sway,
  Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff,
  To praise the one and at the other laugh,
  Yearn all in vain and impotently seek
  Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak
  The sycophantic worship of the weak. 
  Not so the wise, from superstition free,
  Who find small pleasure in the bended knee;
  Quick to discriminate ’twixt good and bad,
  And willing in the king to find the cad—­
  No reason seen why genius and conceit,
  The power to dazzle and the will to cheat,
  The love of daring and the love of gin,
  Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin. 
  To such, great Stanley, you’re a hero still,
  Despite your cradling in a tub for swill. 
  Your peasant manners can’t efface the mark
  Of light you drew across the Land of Dark.

  In you the extremes of character are wed,
  To serve the quick and villify the dead. 
  Hero and clown!  O, man of many sides,
  The Muse of Truth adores you and derides,
  And sheds, impartial, the revealing ray
  Upon your head of gold and feet of clay.