  I KNEW some jolly people, all as happy as could be, Always eager for their dinner, always ready for their tea; Cheeks had they for ever rosy, eyes that glistened and were bright— They could eat a hearty supper and sleep calmly through the night. They had neither pain nor aching, and, as none of them were ill, They had never taken physic and they paid no doctor’s bill. O, in all the British islands none were healthier, I ween, Or more happy and contented than the Browns of Walham Green. But one day, inside a carriage on the smoky “Underground,” Coming homeward from the City, pa a bulky journal found; ’Twas a Lancet, that some reader had forgotten and had left, So pa put it in his pocket—which of course was not a theft; For I’ve often in this manner seized and taken home the Times, But better, O far better, had that Lancet never been On the seat in the compartment where sat Brown of Walham Green. Mr. Brown, he glanced it over while partaking of his tea. “Did you ever? Well, I never!” every moment muttered he; And he left his tea untasted, and he put his muffin down, And his manner altogether was so queer that Mrs. Brown Rose and screamed, “Good gracious, Thomas! what’s the matter—tell me true! You are going white and yellow, and your lips are turning blue;” And for answer out he read them all the awful things he’d seen In the Lancet, and a panic seized the Browns of Walham Green. For they knew the germs of fever were around them everywhere— They were told how very fatal was the family armchair; Germs of death were scattered broadcast, and they shivered as they sat. They were told that death was lurking in the teapot and the tank, In the milk and in the water, and in everything they drank. In their terror ’gainst each other all the family did lean— Peace of mind had gone for ever from the Browns of Walham Green. From that day they took the Lancet, every week they read it through, And their faces changed from rosy to a sickly yellow hue; And they could not eat their dinner, and they could not sleep at night, For with every Friday’s Lancet came a new and awful fright. Germs of all the fell diseases that lie lurking for mankind Were, according to the Lancet, blown on every passing wind; “How on earth from all these dangers shall our carcasses we screen?” Cried, in throes of hourly anguish, all the Browns of Walham Green. In the cottage of the lowly, in the castles of the great, In the street and in the parlour, in the train and in the ’bus. Round the corner germs are waiting, on the watch to spring on us. There are germs in clothes and customs—ah, the Lancet’s eye is keen, It has even pierced the dustbin of the Browns of Walham Green! There, it told them, germs in thousands lay in waiting night and day, So they went and threw carbolic in a wildly lavish way. Then it warned them in a leader that they’d better all look out For a dreadful epidemic that came down the waterspout; Up they went upon the housetop and poured quarts of Condy down, Which they carried up in buckets—Mr., Miss, and Mrs. Brown— And the neighbours stood and wondered what the dickens it could mean, At the gath’ring on the housetop of the Browns of Walham Green. Every week came other terrors, every week their fears grew worse, Till they felt their lives a burthen, till they felt their home a curse; And they sat around the table with a look of nervous dread, So upset by fears of dying that they wished that they were dead. And when they all were turning to mere bags of skin and bone, And all the sound they uttered was a deep sepulchral groan, Up rose young Tom, the eldest—a youth of seventeen— And seized and flung the Lancet right out on Walham Green. “Get out, you horrid bogey—you terrifying pest!”— Exclaimed young Tom in anger as he flung it east and west. Then pa rose up, and, lifting his hand to heaven’s dome, Swore that never more the Lancet should come into the home. And from that hour there vanished their look of care and woe, And all of them grew happy as in the long ago. They live in calm contentment—the Browns of Walham Green. MORAL.There ignorance is comfort, it is folly to be wise; In mercy lies the future concealed from mortal eyes. The thousand hidden dangers for man that lie in wait, If known, would lead him surely to share the madman’s fate. Life were not worth the living were we to dread the germs The Lancet serves up weekly in scientific terms. So snap your fingers at them—the germs, of course, I mean— And take to heart the story of the Browns of Walham Green. |
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