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Accordingly, with very great propriety,She joined the H. N. B. and double S.,That is,--Hog’s Norton Blue Stocking Society;And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited,ContributedHer pork and poetry towards the mess.This feast, we said, one Friday was the case,When farmer Grayley--from Macbeth to quote--Screwing his courage to the “sticking place,”Stuck a large knife into a grunter’s throat;--A kind of murder that the law’s rebukeSeldom condemns by shake of its peruke,Showing the little sympathy of big-wigsWith pig-wigs!

The swine--poor wretch!--with nobody to speak for it,And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it;So--like the fabled swan--died singing out,And, thus, there issued from the farmer’s yardA note that notified without a card,An invitation to the evening rout.

And when the time came duly,--“At the close ofThe day,” as Beattie has it, “when the ham--”Bacon and pork were ready to dispose of,And pettitoes and chit’lings too, to cram,--Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.’s,All in appropriate and swinish dresses,For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke,Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it,They came--each “Pig-faced Lady,” in that bonnetWe call a poke.

The Members all assembled thus, a rare womanAt pork and poetry was chosen chairwoman;--In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey,Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy,She always named the authoress of “Psyche”--As Mrs. Tiggey!

And now arose a question of some moment,--What author for a lecture was the richer,Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont,But some for Flitcher;While others, with a more sagacious reasoning,Proposed another work,And thought their porkWould prove more relishing from Thomson’s Season-ing!

But practised in Shakspearian readings daily,--O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog’s Norton!--Miss Anne Priscilla Isabella GrayleySelected him that evening to snort on.In short, to make our story not a big tale,Just fancy her exertingHer talents, and convertingThe Winter’s Tale to something like a pig-tale!Her sister auditoryAll sitting round, with grave and learned faces,Were very plauditory,Of course, and clapped her at the proper places.

Till fanned at once by fortune and the Muse,She thought herself the blessedest of Blues.But Happiness, alas! has blights of ill,And Pleasure’s bubbles in the air explode;--There is no travelling through life but stillThe heart will meet with breakers on the road!

With that peculiar voiceHeard only from Hog’s Norton throats and noses,Miss G., with Perdita, was making choiceOf buds and blossoms for her summer posies,When coming to that line, where ProserpineLets fall her flowers from the wain of Dis;Imagine this--Uprose on his hind legs old Farmer Grayley,Grunting this question for the club’s digestion,“Do Dis’s Waggon go from the Ould Bäaley?”