cockle v. cackle.

those who much read advertisements and bills,

must have seen puffs of cockle’s pills,

call’d anti-bilious—

which some physicians sneer at, supercilious,

but which we are assured, if timely taken,

may save your liver and bacon;

whether or not they really give one ease,

i, who have never tried,

will not decide;

but no two things in union go like these—

viz.—quacks and pills—save ducks and pease.

now mrs. w. was getting sallow,

her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow,

and friends portended was preparing for

a human pâté périgord;

she was, indeed, so very far from well,

her son, in filial fear, procured a box

of those said pellets to resist bile’s shocks,

and—tho’ upon the ear it strangely knocks—

to save her by a cockle from a shell!

but mrs. w., just like macbeth,

who very vehemently bids us “throw

bark to the bow-wows,” hated physic so,

it seem’d to share “the bitterness of death:”

[pg 158]

rhubarb—magnesia—jalap, and the kind—

senna—steel—assa-fœtida, and squills—

powder or draught—but least her throat inclined

to give a course to boluses or pills:

no—not to save her life, in lung or lobe,

for all her lights or all her liver’s sake,

would her convulsive thorax undertake,

only one little uncelestial globe!

’tis not to wonder at, in such a case,

if she put by the pill-box in a place

for linen rather than for drugs intended—

yet for the credit of the pills let’s say

after they thus were stow’d away,

some of the linen mended;

but mrs. w. by disease’s dint,

kept getting still more yellow in her tint,

when lo! her second son, like elder brother,

marking the hue on the parental gills,

brought a new charge of anti-tumeric pills,

to bleach the jaundiced visage of his mother—

who took them—in her cupboard—like the other.

“deeper and deeper, still,” of course,

the fatal colour daily grew in force;

till daughter w. newly come from rome,

acting the self-same filial, pillial, part,

to cure mamma, another dose brought home

of cockles;—not the cockles of her heart!

these going where the others went before,

of course she had a very pretty store;

[pg 159]

and then—some hue of health her cheek adorning,

the medicine so good must be,

they brought her dose on dose, which she

gave to the upstairs cupboard, “night and morning.”

till wanting room at last, for other stocks,

out of the window one fine day she pitch’d

the pillage of each box, and quite enrich’d

the feed of mister burrell’s hens and cocks,—

a little barber of a by-gone day,

over the way

whose stock in trade, to keep the least of shops,

was one great head of kemble,—that is, john,

staring in plaster, with a brutus on,

and twenty little bantam fowls—with crops.

little dame w. thought when through the sash

she gave the physic wings,

to find the very things

so good for bile, so bad for chicken rash,

for thoughtless cock, and unreflecting pullet!

but while they gathered up the nauseous nubbles,

each peck’d itself into a peck of troubles,

and brought the hand of death upon its gullet.

they might as well have addled been, or ratted,

for long before the night—ah woe betide

the pills! each suicidal bantam died

unfatted!

think of poor burrell’s shock,

of nature’s debt to see his hens all payers,

and laid in death as everlasting layers,

with bantam’s small ex-emperor, the cock,

[pg 160]

in ruffled plumage and funereal hackle,

giving, undone by cockle, a last cackle!

to see as stiff as stone, his unlive stock,

it really was enough to move his block.

down on the floor he dash’d, with horror big,

mr. bell’s third wife’s mother’s coachman’s wig;

and with a tragic stare like his own kemble,

burst out with natural emphasis enough,

and voice that grief made tremble,

into that very speech of sad macduff—

“what!—all my pretty chickens and their dam,

at one fell swoop!—

just when i’d bought a coop

to see the poor lamented creatures cram!”

after a little of this mood,

and brooding over the departed brood,

with razor he began to ope each craw,

already turning black, as black as coals;

when lo! the undigested cause he saw—

“pison’d by goles!”

to mrs. w.’s luck a contradiction,

her window still stood open to conviction;

and by short course of circumstantial labour,

he fix’d the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;—

lord! how he rail’d at her: declaring now,

he’d bring an action ere next term of hilary,

then, in another moment, swore a vow,

he’d make her do pill-penance in the pillory!

she, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream

of combating with guilt, yard-arm or arm-yard,

lapp’d in a paradise of tea and cream;

[pg 161]

when up ran betty with a dismal scream—

“here’s mr. burrell, ma’am, with all his farm-yard!”

straight in he came, unbowing and unbending,

with all the warmth that iron and a barber

can harbour;

to dress the head and front of her offending,

the fuming phial of his wrath uncorking;

in short, he made her pay him altogether,

in hard cash, very hard, for ev’ry feather,

charging of course, each bantam as a dorking;

nothing could move him, nothing make him supple,

so the sad dame unpocketing her loss,

had nothing left but to sit hands across,

and see her poultry, “going down ten couple.”