34 WHAT DO POLKS LAUGH AT? 



above defend me, four horse-laughs !— this is more than I can bear! 

 Coachman, coachman, stop, for the love of mercy, stop ;" gasped I, 

 " let me down." " Oh, you're afeavd. Sir, are you, it's only nothing" — 

 " Only nothing ! how cool the fellow talks !" 



The next day I arrived at my old apartments in Jermyn Street. My 

 little Tiger opened the door with a smiling face. " You young vaga- 

 bond," said I, " what do you smile at ?" The boy said nothing, but 

 smiled again. Reader, I dare say now, that whilst you have skimmed 

 these pages, you may perhaps have grinned a ghastly grin ; and yet, if 

 I asked you what you laughed at, and you were to speak the truth, you 

 ■would reply nothing ! Every body laughs at nothing, and nobody laughs 

 at nothing. I determined to live solus no longer, to be haunted by 

 horse-laughs, cat-grins, and donkey-smiles. So, thinking the case carefully 

 over, I made up my mind (a kind of bolstering up, as I before said) to 

 get married forthwith, which is no laughing matter, I assure you ; only 

 consider coolly as I did, over a bottle of iced claret and cayenned 

 biscuits, and you too, I guess, will grow rather timorous. A wife's like 

 a cut at cards — both may either turn up an ace, a trump, or the deuce ; 

 and oftentimes they cut a heart, which cannot cut from them — and 

 then the squalling brats ; slobbering and greasing you, from top to toe, 

 worse than any brick-bats ; curtain lectures, hair combing, long faces, 

 longer tongues, tears, cucumbers and onions, cum multis uliis — never, I 

 hope to come, for a poor weak-minded wretch that I am. I hummed the 

 popular song of " Why don't the men propose ?" and it hummed me, for I 

 obeyed its injunctions the next morning ; how ? but I shall tell you no- 

 thing about that, excepting that I went on my marrow-bones, and the 

 lady laughed in my face. I asked her what about, and she replied 

 " nothing," yet 1 verily believe it was from joy ; for Ellen and I were 

 soon made one, (as it is called) and ever since that blessed day, we have 

 both been so happy, (which I hope may be the case with you all) that 

 even I, the ontologist, the poet, misanthrope, exquisite, nonentity, no 

 longer ask folks what they grin at, but laugh myself at everything, 

 anything, or nothing ! Umbra, 



October, 1835. 



EPIGRAM. 



Thy heaving bosom is the couch of Love, 



He kindles passion at thy flashing eye. 

 Anon — among thy brown tresses will he rove ; 



Anon — to thy sweet lips for kisses fly ! 

 So charm'd is he with his enchanted bed. 



So loth fi"om such delicious lips to part. 

 So amply at thine eye his torch is fed. 



He never yet has rack'd thy icy heart ! 



S. T. 



