There could be
no prescribing to her the time when she should roar--no teaching
her to fawn and fondle, and not to rend. Soul, and eye, and tongue,
would speak under the one impulse, in the exciting moment; and when
Mrs. Singalongohnay was squeaking out her eternal requiems--her new
versions of the Psalms and Scriptures--her blank verse elegiacs--oh!
how blank!--beginning, 'Night was upon the hills,'--or 'The evening
veil hung low,' or, 'It slept,'--or after some other equally
threatening form and fashion--I can fancy how the bright eye of
Margaret would gleam with scorn; and while the Pollies and Dollies,
the Patties and Jennies, the Corydons and Jemmy Jesamies, all
round were throwing up hands and eyes in a sort of rapture, how
she would look, with what equal surprise and contempt, doubting
her own ears, and sickening at the stuff and the strange sycophancy
which induced it. And should good old Singalongohnay, with a natural
and patronizing visage, approach, and venture to talk to her about
poetry, with that assured smile of self-excellence which such a
venerable authority naturally employs, how she would turn upon the
dame and exclaim--'What! do you call that poetry?' What a concussion
would follow.
Pages:
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347