"Little Jack Jingle

Used to live single.

But when he got tired

Of that kind of life,

He left off being single,

And lived with his wife."

Your period's pointed, most excellent Moth-

er!

Pray what did he do when he tired of the

other?

For a man so deplorably prone to ennui

But a queer sort of husband is likely to be.

The fatigue might recur,—and, in case it

should be so,

Why not take a wife on a limited lease, O?

Grant the privilege, pray, to his idiosyn-

crazy,—

Some natures won't bear to be too closely

pinned, you see,—

And, at worst, the poor Benedict might

advertise,

When weary, at length, of the light of his

eyes,—

Or failing to find her, it may be, in salt,—

"Disposed of, indeed, for no manner of

fault,"

(To borrow a figure of speech from the

mart,)

"But because the late owner has taken a

start!"

I believe once before you have cautiously

said

Something quite as concise on this delicate

head,

When distantly hinting at "needles and

pins,"

And that "when a man marries, his trouble

begins";

But I don't recollect that you ever pretend

To prophesy anything as to the end.

Unless we may learn it of Peter,—the

bumpkin,

Renowned for naught else but his eating

of pumpkin;

Whose wife—I don't see how he happened

to get her—

Had a taste, very likely, for things that

were better:

Since, fearing to lose her, at last it be-

fell

He bethought him of shutting her up in a

shell;

By which brilliant contrivance she kept very

well!

What he did with her next, the old rhyme

does n't say,

But she seems to be somehow got out of

the way,

For the ill-fated Peter was wedded once

more,

To find his bewilderment worse than be-

fore;

"If the first for her spouse had but small

predilection,

Now 't was his turn, alas! to fall short in

affection.

And how do you think that he conquered

the evil?

Why, simply by lifting himself to her level;

By leaving his pumpkins, and learning to

spell,

He came, saith the story, to love her right

well;

And the mythical memoir its moral con-

trives

For the lasting instruction of husband*

and wives.