And pears in their season--and sucking their thumbs."

And part of the moral to the 'Lay of St. Medard' is--

"Don't give people nicknames! don't, even in fun,
Call any one 'snuff-colored son of a gun'!"

And they generally wind up with some slyly shrewd piece of worldly
wisdom and wit. Thus, the closing moral to 'The Blasphemer's
Warning' is:--

"To married men this--For the rest of your lives,
Think how your misconduct may act on your wives!
Don't swear then before them, lest haply they faint,
Or--what sometimes occurs--run away with a Saint!"

Often they are broader yet, and intended for the club rather than the
family. Indeed, the tales as a whole are club tales, with an audience of
club-men always in mind; not, be it remembered, bestialities like their
French counterparts, or the later English and American improvements on
the French, not even objectionable for general reading, but full of
exclusively masculine joking, allusions, and winks, unintelligible to
the other sex, and not welcome if they were intelligible.

He has plenty of melody, but it is hardly recognized because of the
doggerel meaning, which swamps the music in the farce. And this applies
to more important things than the melody. The average reader floats on
the surface of this rapid and foamy stream, covered with sticks and
straws and flowers and bonbons, and never realizes its depth and volume.
This light frothy verse is only the vehicle of a solid and laborious