_Lock! Lock!_"--Shock! Rock! That's a pretty frock bulging over the
gunwale!
She looks like to choke with that horrible smoke, which is fuming out
of the Steam-Launch funnel.
Pleasant old cry! All in, and dry. though we're awfully crowded this
first Spring holiday,
Better this than St. Stephen's dead-lock! Our serious Senators out
for a jolly day
Might do worse. Who carries the purse? That ten-foot rod with the
toll-net ending it
Means a hint. They must make "a mint"; and, by Jove, there are many
worse ways of spending it,--
Money, I mean. Now were G-SCH-N seen collecting cash for his dry
Exchequer
With pole and net, it were nicer, you bet, than keeping up his
financial pecker
With Spirit Duties! Those two blonde beauties in Cambridge blue are
exceeding bonny;
B-LF-R now at that same boat's bow would be quite in his element--eh,
my sonny?
And OLD MORALITY cooling his legs in the stern-sheets yonder would
find the steering
Easier far than amidst the jar of St. Stephen's, hot with T-M H-LY
jeering.
S-L-SB-RY, too, with a well-trained crew, would put his back--that
broad back of his!--in it.
Don't be in a hurry, my nautical friend! we shall all get out in
another minute.
Just like life! Such fidgety strife to be first to the front when the
lock-gates sever.
What does it matter, friends, after all? The slow, the skilful, the
dull, the clever,
The snake-swift "swell" and the splashing 'ARRY, the puffing launch,
and the trim outrigger,
The calm canoest who hugs the timbers, the fussy punter who toils
like a nigger,
All will anon be well out in the cutting, the old gates shutting
slowly behind them,
And where are those who so shoved to the front? At the tail of the
race you may presently find them.
The G.O.M. (with his collars for sails), that jaunty skiff might be
handling. Bless us!
Can he take holiday, he whom toil seems to encoil like a shirt of
Nessus?
Well, Union_ist_ or Separat_ist_, or chap with a twist like
C-NN-NGH-M GR-H-M,
Or howling PAT, or Aristo_crat_ with manners like BRUMMEL and voice
like BRAHAM,
Peppery G-SCH-N, or pompous H-RC-RT, or genial SM-TH, the new-made
Warden,
All, all, to-day, when the world is gay, the stream like silver, the
banks a garden,
_Much_ worse might do than tog up in