At a Fancy Fair for a penny trumpet.
Lord! what's a pound to the blessing of hearing!"
("A pound's a pound," said Dame Eleanor Spearing.)

"Try it again! no harm in trying!
A pound's a pound, there's no denying;
But think what thousands and thousands of pounds
We pay for nothing but hearing sounds:
Sounds of Equity, Justice, and Law,
Parliamentary jabber and jaw,
Pious cant, and moral saw,
Hocus-pocus, and Nong-tong-paw,
And empty sounds not worth a straw;
Why, it costs a guinea, as I'm a sinner,
To hear the sounds at a public dinner!
One pound one thrown into the puddle,
To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle!
Not to forget the sounds we buy
From those who sell their sounds so high,
That, unless the managers pitch it strong,
To get a signora to warble a song,
You must fork out the blunt with a haymaker's prong!

"It's not the thing for me--I know it,
To crack my own trumpet up and blow it;
But it is the best, and time will show it.
There was Mrs. F.
So very deaf,
That she might have worn a percussion cap,
And been knocked on the head without hearing it snap,