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 green-grocer'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 toy-shop, but not a whole one, for a village can't compare with the London shops; One window sells drums, dolls, kites, carts, batts, 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! THE OLD GOVERNMENT CLERK. By F. LOCKER. We knew an old Scribe, it was once on a time,❞— An era to set sober datists despairing ;Then let them despair! Darby sat in a chair Near the cross that gave name to the village of Charing. Though silent and lean, Darby was not malign, What hair he had left was more silver than sable; He had also contracted a curve in his spine From bending too constantly over a table. I His pay and expenditure, quite in accord, Were both on the strictest economy founded; His masters were known as the Sealing-wax Board, Who ruled where red tape and snug places abounded. In his heart he looked down on this dignified knot,— For why, the forefather of one of these senators, A rascal concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, Had been barber-surgeon to Darby's progenitors. Poor fool! Life is all a vagary of Luck,— Still, for thirty long years of genteel destitution |