And after poking in pot and pan,
And routing garments in want of stitches,
Have ascertained that a working man
Wears a pair and a quarter of average breeches!

But this, alas! from her loss of hearing,
Was all a sealed book to Dame Eleanor Spearing;
And often her tears would rise to their founts -
Supposing a little scandal at play
'Twixt Mrs. O'Fie and Mrs. Au Fait -
That she couldn't audit the gossips' accounts.
'Tis true, to her cottage still they came,
And ate her muffins just the same,
And drank the tea of the widowed dame,
And never swallowed a thimble the less
Of something the reader is left to guess,
For all the deafness of Mrs. S.
Who SAW them talk, and chuckle, and cough,
But to SEE and not share in the social flow,
She might as well have lived, you know,
In one of the houses in Owen's Row,
Near the New River Head, with its water cut off!
And yet the almond oil she had tried,
And fifty infallible things beside,
Hot, and cold, and thick, and thin,
Dabbed, and dribbled, and squirted in:
But all remedies failed; and though some it was clear,
Like the brandy and salt
We now exalt,
Had made a noise in the public ear,