Nothing to Eat
Turk, Where husbands descended from Saxon or Norman, For women when sickly are willing to work, And not long for Utah and pleasures la Mormon—    Where men freely marry and live with their wives, And not live as you do, mon Colonel, so single. Such wretched and dinnerless bachelor lives; You don't know the pleasure there is in the tingle Of ears pricked by lectures, la curtain, au Caudle, Or noise of young Dinewells beginning to toddle; While plodding all day with your paper and quills, And copy, and proof sheets, and work for the printer, Pray what do you know of the housekeeper's bills, And other such 'pleasures of hope' for the winter? You men, selfish creatures, think all of the care Of living and keeping yourselves in existence, Is due to your own daily labor, and share, From breakfast to dinner of business persistance; While woman is either a plaything or drudge, According to station of wealth or position, Which men help along with a word or a nudge To heaven high up or low down to perdition. But what was I saying of a world free from care, Of eating and drinking and dresses to wear? Where women by husbands are never tormented, And never asked money where husbands dissented? And never see others, their rivals, in fashion ahead, And never have doctors—a woman's great dread—    And nothing, I hope, like my own indigestion, To torment and starve them, as this one does me, And keep them from sipping—forgive the suggestion—    The nectar etherial they drink for their tea. 

  

  

       Mrs. Merdle Suggesteth that Dinner being finished, the Gentlement will Smoke. In the meantime, she Discourseth.     

    “Now Merdle—now Colonel—I know you are waiting. And thinking my talking to eating's a bar, Still hoping, by tasting, my appetite sating, Will give you the license to smoke a cigar.     {Illustration: “WILL GIVE YOU THE LICENSE TO SMOKE A CIGAR"}     Well then, I've done now, and hope too you've dined, As well as down town where you dine for a shilling, At Taylor's, or Thompson's, or one of the kind, Where mortals are flocking each day for their filling; Or else at the Astor where bachelors quarter, Where port holes for windows give light to the room, Far out of the region of Eve's every daughter, So high they are stuck up away toward the moon. Though as for the 'stuck up' no walls built of brick, Or granite, or marble, or dirty red sand, Could stick up a man who himself's but a stick, An inch above where he would naturally 
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