What another Poet did.     

    Another expounder of life's thorny mazes Excited our pity at fortune's hard fare, And troubled the city's most troublesome places, While singing his ditty of “Nothing to Wear.”     “A tale worth the telling,”' though I tell for the same, Great objects of pity we see in the street,    “With nothing to wear, though a legion by name, Is not to buy clothing, but something to eat. 

  

  

       How the Author sometimes Dines.     

    And now by your leave I will try to expound it, In truth as it is and the way that I found it. My dinner, sometimes, like things transcendental And things more substantial, like women and wine A thing is, uncertain, and quite accidental, And sometimes I wonder, “Oh! where shall I dine?”     It was when reflecting one evening of late, What tavern or hotel or dining-room skinner, With table cloth dirty and dirtier plate, Would give me a nausea and call it a dinner, I met with Jack Merdle, a name fully known As good for a million in Stock-gamblers' Street, Where none but a nabob or forger high flown With “bulls” or with “bears” need look for a seat. 

  

  

       Merdle the Banker.     

    Now Merdle this day having toss'd with his horns The bears that were pulling so hard at the stocks, And gored every bull that was treading his corns, Had lined all his pockets with “plenty of rocks,”     And home now was driving at “two forty” speed, Where dinner was waiting—“a jolly good feed.”     Himself feeling happy, he knew by my looks, A case full of sadness and deep destitution Was present in person, not read of in books, Appealing in pity for an alms institution. 

  

  

       Places Where Mortals Dine.     

    The case, too, was urgent, for there stood a sinner, Whose fate hung on chance—a chance for his dinner; A chance for all mortals, with truth I assert, Who eat where his chance was, to counteract fate,    “To eat during life each a peck of pure dirt”     By eating at once the 

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