  THERE was once a new-born infant; at the moment of its birth It became the greatest villain that was ever known on earth. For there wasn’t any item in the catalogue of crime Which that babe had not committed in the briefest space of time. When its little peepers opened to their primal ray of light They’d a look of dissipation and of being out all night, And, before a score of seconds had passed o’er its infant head, It had, in a fit of passion, kicked its mother out of bed. At a week, a scheme of murder floated through its baby brain, For the monthly nurse, unwisely, had displayed her watch and chain; So he slew her, and he stole them, with an infantile “Ha, ha!” As he managed that suspicion should be cast upon his pa. Then he crowed till he was purple, and his back they had to pat, When the famous Mr. Berry made his pa a new cravat; And when nobody was looking and the hour was nice and still, He secured his father’s papers, and he tampered with the will. He bequeathed himself the mansion, the carriages, and plate, And all the landed property and personal estate. When the law his pa had Berried, with a sly, Satanic mirth, He ante-dated twenty years his “stifficate” of birth. Then at once he took possession, and he told his ma to go, And because she made objections, pushed her out into the snow; She was taken to the workhouse, where her widowed heart soon broke, For she couldn’t stand the skilly, and she turned against the toke. Then this wretched new-born infant, knowing not a parent’s care, Began to blue the property to which he was the heir. Through keeping shady company, he went from bad to worse— He was not the sort of baby that a decent girl could nurse. At law and at morality that wicked baby mocked, He was such a thorough villain that Society was shocked; And it was not much astonished when, before completing three, He had wrecked his constitution and had suffered from d.t. At the age of four a bloated, shattered martyr to the gout, He arsoned so incautiously the Office found him out. To escape a prosecution he committed suicide, And the world has been much better since that little darling died. |
|
