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Half-hours with the best humorous authors
Halfhours with the best humorous authors Author:Charles Morris Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " Whether I ought to die or not The doctors cannot quite determine ; It's only clear that I shall rot, And be, like Priam, food for vermin. My debts are p... more »aid. But Nature's debt Almost escaped my recollection: Tom, we shall meet again; and yet I cannot leave you my direction !" THE VICAE. His talk was like a stream which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses; It slipped from politics to puns, It passed from Mahomet to Moses, Beginning with the laws which keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For dressing eels or shoeing horses. He was a shrewd and sound divine, Of loud dissent the mortal terror; And when by dint of page and line He 'stablished truth or startled error, The Baptist found him far too deep, The Deist sighed with saving sorrow, And the lean Levite went to sleep And dreamt of eating pork to-morrow. He wrote, too, in a quiet way, Small treatises and smaller verses, And sage remarks on chalk and clay, And hints to noble lords and nurses; iv.—B 3 True histories of last year's ghost; Liues to a ringlet or a turban; And trifles for the Morning Post, And nothings for Sylvanus Urban. Ho did not think all mischief fair, Although ho had a knack for joking; Ho did not make himself a bear, Although ho had a tasto for smoking. And when religious sects ran mad, Ho held, in spite of all his learning, That if a man's belief is bad It will not bo improved by burning. [To tho above wo add a selection from Charles Stuart Calverley, born at Hartley, Worcestershire, in 1831, died in 1884. He wrote many clever humorous poems and parodies, a collection of which have been published under the title " Fly Leaves."] FLIGHT. 0 memory ! that which I gave th...« less