Jack Doe met Dick Roe, whose wife he loved,
And said: “I will
get the best of him.”
So pulling a knife from his boot, he shoved
It up to the hilt in the breast
of him.
Then he moved that weapon forth and back,
Enlarging the hole he had
made with it,
Till the smoking liver fell out, and Jack
Merrily, merrily played with
it.
Then he reached within and he seized the
slack
Of the lesser bowel, and,
traveling
Hither and thither, looked idly back
On that small intestine, raveling.
The wretched Richard, with many a grin
Laid on with exceeding suavity,
Curled up and died, and they ran John
in
And charged him with sins
of gravity.
The case was tried and a verdict found:
The jury, with great humanity,
Acquitted the prisoner on the ground
Of extemporary insanity.
MR. FINK’S DEBATING DONKEY.
Of a person known as Peters I will humbly
crave your leave
An unusual adventure into narrative to
weave—
Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town
of Muscatel,
A public educator and an orator as well.
Mr. Peters had a weakness which, ’tis
painful to relate,
Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures
of debate.
He would foster disputation wheresoever
he might be;
In polygonal contention none so happy
was as he.
’Twas observable, however, that
the exercises ran
Into monologue by Peters, that rhetorical
young man.
And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted
at the show,
By involuntary silence testified their
overthrow—
Mr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence
and their grief,
Still effacing every vestige of erroneous
belief.
O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics
so bold
As to entertain opinions that he didn’t
care to hold.
One day—’t was in pursuance
of a pedagogic plan
For the mental elevation of Uncultivated
Man—
Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing
them, explained
That the Friday evening following (unless,
indeed, it rained)
Would be signalized by holding in the
schoolhouse a debate
Free to all who their opinions might desire
to ventilate
On the question, “Which is better,
as a serviceable gift,
Speech or hearing, from barbarity the
human mind to lift?”
The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded
always, met
At the barroom to discuss it every evening,
dry or wet,
They argued it and argued it and spat
upon the stove,
And the non-committal “barkeep”
on their differences throve.
And I state it as a maxim in a loosish
kind of way:
You’ll have the more to back your
word the less you have to say.
Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer
Fink
Of the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed
to sit and think.
On the memorable evening all the men of
Muscatel Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence
as well— All but William Perry Peters,
whose attendance there, I fear. Was to wreak
his ready rhetoric upon the public ear, And prove
(whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn’t
lift The human mind as ably as the other, greater
gift. The judges being chosen and the disputants
enrolled, The question he proceeded in extenso
to unfold: “Resolved—The
sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reach Of
the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech.”
This simple proposition he expounded, word by word,
Until they best understood it who least perfectly
had heard. Even the judges comprehended as
he ventured to explain— The impact of
a spit-ball admonishing in vain. Beginning
at a period before Creation’s morn, He had
reached the bounds of tolerance and Adam yet unborn.
As down the early centuries of pre-historic time
He tracked important principles and quoted striking
rhyme, And Whisky Bill, prosaic soul! proclaiming
him a jay, Had risen and like an earthquake, “reeled
unheededly away,” And a late lamented cat,
when opportunity should serve, Was preparing to
embark upon her parabolic curve, A noise arose outside—the
door was opened with a bang And old Ebenezer Fink
was heard ejaculating “G’lang!”
Straight into that assembly gravely marched without
a wink An ancient ass—the property it
was of Mr. Fink. Its ears depressed and beating
time to its infestive tread, Silent through silence
moved amain that stately quadruped! It stopped
before the orator, and in the lamplight thrown Upon
its tail they saw that member weighted with a stone.
Then spake old Ebenezer: “Gents, I heern
o’ this debate On w’ether v’ice
or y’ears is best the mind to elevate.
Now ’yer’s a bird ken throw some light
uponto that tough theme: He has ’em both,
I’m free to say, oncommonly extreme. He
wa’n’t invited for to speak, but he will
not refuse (If t’other gentleman ken wait)
to exposay his views.”
Ere merriment or anger o’er amazement
could prevail;
He cut the string that held the stone
on that canary’s tail.
Freed from the weight, that member made
a gesture of delight,
Then rose until its rigid length was horizontal
quite.
With lifted head and level ears along
his withers laid,
Jack sighed, refilled his lungs and then—to
put it mildly—brayed!
He brayed until the stones were stirred
in circumjacent hills,
And sleeping women rose and fled, in divers
kinds of frills.
’T is said that awful bugle-blast—to
make the story brief—
Wafted William Perry Peters through the
window, like a leaf!
Such is the tale. If anything additional
occurred
’Tis not set down, though, truly,
I remember to have heard
That a gentleman named Peters, now residing
at Soquel,
A considerable distance from the town
of Muscatel,
Is opposed to education, and to rhetoric,
as well.
