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Read Ebook: The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11) Comic and Serious in Prose and Verse With All the Original Illustrations by Hood Thomas Broderip Frances Freeling Editor Hood Tom Editor
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Ebook has 1146 lines and 135136 words, and 23 pages
The Quakers' Conversazione 333
Sketches on the Road. The Morning Call 344
The Lament of Toby, the Learned Pig 348
To a Bad Rider 351
My Son and Heir 352
The Carnaby Correspondence 395
A Rise at the Father of Angling 425
Right and Wrong. A Sketch at Sea 431
Patronage 440
Animal Magnetism 452
The Forlorn Shepherd's Complaint. An Unpublished Poem, from Sidney 464
HOOD'S OWN:
OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR.
THE BOY AT THE NORE.
"Alone I did it!--Boy!"--CORIOLANUS.
I SAY, little Boy at the Nore, Do you come from the small Isle of Man? Why, your history a mystery must be,-- Come tell us as much as you can, Little Boy at the Nore!
You live it seems wholly on water, Which your Gambier calls living in clover;-- But how comes it, if that is the case, You're eternally half seas over,-- Little Boy at the Nore?
While you ride--while you dance--while you float-- Never mind your imperfect orthography;-- But give us as well as you can, Your watery auto-biography, Little Boy at the Nore!
LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITUR.
I'm the tight little Boy at the Nore, In a sort of sea negus I dwells; Half and half 'twixt saltwater and Port, I'm reckon'd the first of the swells-- I'm the Boy at the Nore!
I lives with my toes to the flounders, And watches through long days and nights; Yet, cruelly eager, men look-- To catch the first glimpse of my lights-- I'm the Boy at the Nore.
I never gets cold in the head, So my life on salt water is sweet,-- I think I owes much of my health To being well used to wet feet-- As the Boy at the Nore.
I've seen a good deal of distress, Lots of Breakers in Ocean's Gazette; They should do as I do--rise o'er all; Aye, a good floating capital get, Like the Boy at the Nore!
I'm a'ter the sailor's own heart, And cheers him, in deep water rolling; And the friend of all friends to Jack Junk, Ben Backstay, Tom Pipes, and Tom Bowling, Is the Boy at the Nore!
They thinks little of sizes on water, On big waves the tiny one skulks,-- While the river has Men of War on it-- Yes--the Thames is oppress'd with great Hulks, And the Boy's at the Nore!
But I've done--for the water is heaving Round my body, as though it would sink it! And I've been so long pitching and tossing, That sea-sick--you'd hardly now think it-- Is the Boy at the Nore!
A word caught from some American Trader in passing.
THE RUN-OVER.
"DO you see that 'ere gentleman in the buggy, with the clipt un?" enquired Ned Stocker, as he pointed with his whip at a chaise, some fifty yards in advance. "Well, for all he's driving there so easy like, and comfortable, he once had a gig-shaft, and that's a fact, driv right through his body!"
"Rather him than me," drawled a passenger on the box, without removing his cigar from his mouth.
"It's true for all that," returned Ned, with a nod of his head equal to an affidavit. "The shaft run in under one armpit, right up to the tug, and out again at t'other besides pinning him to the wall of the stable--and that's a thing such as don't happen every day."
"Lucky it don't," said the smoker, between two puffs of his cigar.
"It an't likely to come often," resumed Ned, "let alone the getting over it afterwards, which is the wonderfullest part of it all. To see him bowling along there, he don't look like a man pinned to a stable-wall with the rod through him, right up to the tug--do he?"
"Can't say he does," said the smoker.
"For my part," said Ned, "or indeed any man's part, most people in such a case would have said, it's all up with me, and good reason why, as I said afore, with a shaft clean through your inside, right up to the tug--and two inches besides into the stable wall, by way of a benefit. But somehow he always stuck to it--not the wall, you know--but his own opinion, that he should get over it--he was as firm as flints about that--and sure enough the event came off exactly."
"The better for him," said the smoker.
"I don't know the rights on it," said Ned, "for I warn't there--but they do say when he was dextricated from the rod, there was a regular tunnel through him, and in course the greatest danger was of his ketching cold in the lungs from the thorough draught."
"Nothing more likely," said the fumigator.
"Howsomever," continued Ned, "he was cured by Dr. Maiden of Stratford, who give him lots of physic to provoke his stomach, and make him eat hearty; and by taking his feeds well,--warm mashes at first, and then hard meat, in course of time he filled up. Nobody hardly believed it, though, when they see him about on his legs again--myself for one--but he always said he would overcome it, and he was as good as his word. If that an't game, I don't know what is."
"No more do I," said the man with the Havannah.
"I don't know the philosophy on it," resumed Ned, "but it's a remark of mine about recovering, if a man says he will, he will,--and if he says he won't, he won't--you may book that for certain. Mayhap a good pluck helps the wounds in healing kindly,--but so it is, for I've observed it. You'll see one man with hardly a scratch on his face, and says he, I'm done for--and he turns out quite correct--while another as is cut to ribbons will say--never mind,--I'm good for another round, and so he proves, particularly if he's one of your small farmers. I'll give you a reason why."
"Now then," said the smoker.
"My reason is," replied Ned, "that they're all as hard as nails--regular pebbles for game. They take more thrashing than their own corn, and that's saying something. They're all fortitude, and nothing else. Talk about punishment! nothing comes amiss to 'em, from butt-ends of whips and brickbats down to bludgeons loaded with lead. You can't hurt their feelings. They're jist like badgers, the more you welt 'em the more they grin, and when it's over, maybe a turn-up at a cattle fair, or a stop by footpads, they'll go home to their missises all over blood and wounds as cool and comfortable as cowcumbers, with holes in their heads enough to scarify a whole hospital of army surgeons."
"The very thing Scott has characterised," I ventured to observe, "in the person of honest Dandie."
"Begging your pardon, Sir," said Ned, "I know Farmer Scott very well, and he's anything but a dandy. I was just a going to bring forward, as one of the trumps, a regular out-and-outer. We become friends through an axident. It was a darkish night, you see, and him a little lushy or so, making a bit of a swerve in his going towards the middle of the road, before you could cry Snacks! I was over him with the old Regulator."
"Good God!" exclaimed my left-hand companion on the roof. "Was not the poor fellow hurt?"
"Why, not much for HIM," answered Ned, with a very decided emphasis on the pronoun. "Though it would have been a quietus for nine men out of ten, and, as the Jews say, Take your pick of the basket. But he looked queer at first, and shook himself, and made a wryish face, like a man that hadn't got the exact bit of the joint he preferred."
"Quite the reverse," answered Ned, quietly, "and far from it; he picked himself up, quite independent, and wouldn't even accept a lift on the box. He only felt about his head a bit, and then his back, and his arms, and his thighs, and his lines, and after that he guv a nod, and says he, 'all right,' and away he toddled."
"I can't credit it," exclaimed the man on the roof.
"That's jist what his wife said," replied Ned, with considerable composure, in spite of the slur on his veracity. "Let alone two black eyes, and his collar bone, and the broke rib, he'd a hole in his head, with a flint sticking in it bigger than any one you can find since Macadaming. But he made so light on it all, and not being very clear besides in his notions, I'm blest if he didn't tell her he'd only been knockt down by a man with a truck!"
"Not a bad story," said the smoker on the box.
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