Our French cook's away too, I vow and declare—    But if you would see us with something to spare, Let's know when you're coming, or come on a Sunday; For that of all others, for churchmen or sinners, A day is for gorging with extra good dinners.     {Illustration: “AND THAT IS JUST WHAT, AS OUR BUTCHER EXPLAINS, THE DICKENS HAS PLAYED WITH OUR BEEF AND OUR MUTTON."}     If Merdle had told me a friend would be here, A dinner I'd get up in spite of the bills—    I often tell butcher he's wonderful dear—    He says every calf that a butcher now kills, Will cost near as much as the price of a steer, Before all the banks in their discount expanded And flooded the country with 'lamp-black and rags,'    Which poor men has ruined and shipwrecked and stranded On Poverty's billows and quick-sands and crags. And that is just what, as our butcher explains, The dickens has played with our beef and our mutton; But something is gained, for, with all of his pains, The poor man won't make of himself such a glutton. I'm sure if they knew what a sin 't is to eat, When things are all selling at extravagant prices, That poor folks more saving would be of their meat, And learn by example how little suffices. I wish they could see for themselves what a table—    What examples we set to the laboring poor, In prudence, and saving, in those who are able To live like a king and his court on a tour. I feel, I acknowledge, sometimes quite dejected To think, as it happens with you here today, To drop in so sudden and quite unexpected, How poor we are living some people will say. 

  

  

       Mrs. Merdle goes to Market.     

    With prices outrageous they charge now for meat, And servants so worthless are every day growing, I wonder we get half enough now to eat, And shouldn't if 't want for the fact of my going    To market to cheapen potatoes and beef, And talk to the butchers about their abuses, And listen to stories beyond our belief, They tell while they cheat us, by way of excuses. And grocers—do tell us—is 't legal to charge Such prices for sugar, and butter, and flour? Oh, why don't the Mayor in his wisdom enlarge Both weight and measure as he does 'doubtful power?' 

  

  

       The Dinner-bell Rings.     

    Mrs. Merdle Describes the Sufferings of Dyspepsia and its Remedy.     

 Prev. P 9/20 next