types of graffiti, however, vary from the very earnest expression
of affection to the nonexcrementally satiric. One of the more unusual is
a poem in praise of a faithful and loving wife:

I kiss'd her standing,
Kiss'd her lying,
Kiss'd her in Health,
And kiss'd her dying;
And when she mounts _the Skies_,
I'll kiss her flying.
(Pt. 3, p. 5)

Underneath this poem, _The Merry-Thought_ records a favorable comment on
the sentiment. Even more earnest is the complaint of a woman about her
fate in love:

Since cruel Fate has robb'd me of the Youth,
For whom my Heart had hoarded all its Truth,
I'll ne'er love more, dispairing e'er to find,
Such Constancy and Truth amongst Mankind.
_Feb._ 18, 1725.
(Pt. 2, p. 12)

We will never know why she was unable to marry the man she truly loved;
but her bitterness may have been short-lived. Just after this
inscription comes a cynical comment identifying the lady as a member of
the Walker family. And the writer insists that like all women she was
inconstant, since he kissed her the next night.

This cynical approach to love and women dominates _The Merry-Thought_.
Part three, for instance, contains a poem that reads like a parody of
Belinda awaking in the first canto of Pope's _Rape of the Lock_. The
author, identified as W. Overb - - ry, presents a realistic morning
scene without either the charms and beauties that surround Pope's
Belinda or the viciousness and focus of Swift's similar pictures (see
pt. 3, p. 26).

Prevailingly, women are depicted as sexually insatiable, as in a piece
written by a man who takes a month's vacation from sex to recoup his
strength (pt. 2, p. 12). And the related image of the female with a
sexual organ capable of absorbing a man plays a variation on the vagina
dentata theme (e.g., pt. 2, pp. 19, 24). A drawing of a man hanging
himself for love raises a considerable debate on whether such a thing
can indeed occur (pt. 2, pp. 17-18). In a more realistic vein, though
equally cynical, is the poem on the woman who complained of her husband
making her pregnant so often:

A poor Woman was ill in a dangerous Case,
She lay in, and was just as some other Folks was:
By the Lord, cries _She_ then, if my Husband e'er come,
Once again with his Will for to tickle my Bum,
I'll storm, and I'll swear, and I'll run staring wild;
A