The Clerk
A Parody
With black coal-dust the walls and floor
Were thickly coated one and all;
On rusty hinges swung the door
That open’d to the gloomy wall;
The broken chairs looked dull and dark,
Undusted was the mantel-piece,
And deeply speck’d with spots of grease
Within, the chamber of the clerk.
He only said, “I’m very weary
With living in this ditch;”
He said, “I am confounded dreary,
I would that I were rich.”
His bills came with the bells at even;
His bills came ere their sound had died;
He could not think why bills were given,
Except to torture clerks—and sigh’d.
And when the flickering rushlight’s flame
In darkness deep could scarce be seen,
He mutter’d forth his bottled spleen,
Unheard by aught of mortal frame.
He said, “My life is very dreary
With living in this ditch;”
He said, “I am tarnation weary,
I would that I were rich.”
Upon the middle of the bed,
Sleeping, he dream’d of hoarded gold;
Sovereigns were jingling in his head,
And in his ken was wealth untold.
But when he woke, no hope of change,
In silver or in circumstance,
Before his sorrowing eyes did dance;
He thought that it was very strange—
But only said, “My life is dreary,
I’ll go to sleep,” he said;
He said “I am infernal weary,
I would that bill were paid.”
About six fathoms from the wall,
A blackened chimney (much askew)
Smoked in his face—and round and small
The chimney-pots destroy his view,
Hard by—a popular highway,
With coal-dust turned to pitchy dark,
Where many a little dog doth bark,
Some black, some mottled, many grey.
He only said, “My life is dreary
With living in this ditch;”
He said, “I am fatigued and weary,
I would that I were rich.”
E. P. W.
The intense melancholy of the solitary clerk, sighing in his ditch, brought up our scientific reporter, Charles Hookey Walker, with some lucid and valuable notes of an appropriate discourse lately delivered; we append them here, for the benefit of all the doleful clerks throughout her Majesty’s dominions.
THE BRIGHTISH ASSOCIATION.—Section B.—Chemistry and Mineralogy.
President—The Rev. Hugh Wells. Vice-Presidents—Dr. Durham & Prof. Hammer.
“On the Formation and Analysis of a Direct Sigh.” By Mr. F. Silly.
The author stated that the sigh-direct was that to which he had paid the greatest attention. The “sigh-direct,” he explained, was entirely different from the “sigh-inverse,” the one being the production of the heart, and the other of the brain; the first being the thing itself, the second merely the symbol of the thing. He found the sigh-direct to consist generally of floating ideas, in the forms of “O dear!” “Ah me!” and “Alas!” held in solution by about their own bulk of a vague composition, formed of wishes and a cloud-vapour (of that class which is used as a site for erecting castles in the air upon), but which were so mixed and intercorporated, as to be inseparable to the nicest analysation. From the analysis, he had determined that the prime motive of a sigh is a longing for more; and that the functions thus acted upon expand the animal economy to its greatest extent, for the purpose of gratifying the longing for getting as much as it can of something, which, in this case, is only air. And this led him to a concluding remark on the extreme uselessness and futility of sighing, perceiving, as he did, that it only gave extra work to the muscles, for no tangible consideration.
Mr. W. R. Fixe read a memoir on the probability of there being a constant chemical action, producing results yet unknown, in the interior of the earth, and that a current of electric fluid was constantly circulating through mineral veins; and that this circulation through the veins of living rocks was of as much importance in the formation of new productions, as the circulation of the blood in the veins of living men.
Our esteemed reporter proceeded to describe the proceedings of another Section.