University of Virginia Library

Why grumble or sneer because those who aspire
To Fashion's gay vapors, wear garments of fire?
Hasn't Nature her colors?—There's many a flower
That flaunts out with red, both in sunshine and shower.
The poppies, the roses, the hollyhocks, dress
In goods that a love for the startling express;
The lightning's oft crimson that pierces and bruises;
The sun paints the firmament red, when he chooses;
So when by style, fancy, or phantasy led,
Why should not Humanity bloom out in red?

These thoughts hovered' round a young lady, one day,
As she walked through the fields in apparel so gay,
That Solomon's milliners glum would have sat,
And murmured, “We never can come up to that.”
It was a young maiden whose father had struck
Some cash-worthy kind of commercial good luck,
Some poison, or trap, or explosive, that rats kills;
And so they were posing a month in the Catskills,
And living in Wealth's costly glamor and clamor,
With fifty-odd times as much glitter as grammar.

And yielding to customs quite prevalent there,
This maid had a costume as red as her hair.
And with her an Englishman wandered; and he
Was searching a fortune this side of the sea
(Thus making of him a financial young “jingo”);
And he had a coat that would scare a flamingo.
Together this pair through the bypaths were wandering,
Two red human flames: and were vocally pondering
(Her name was Dolphina, and his was Adolph)
Of themes of importance connected with Golf,
And what profane search for the ball had her daddy,
One day when attempting to be his own caddy;
And how her poor mamma, with force to appal,
Hit the corn that was sorest instead of the ball;
And how a young lover grew softer and softer,
Until he didn't know a sand-box from a lofter;
And how a fat lady struck ghosts in the air,
And perched on a rock, with momentum to spare;
And how a good parson, with fury unstinted,
Drove his ball in the wall, with a word rarely printed.
And then with a dash—and of other small matters
That make up material for every-day chatters.
Now e'en while her maidenish eloquence bound him,
The Englishman took an uneasy glance 'round him,
And said, as if time were a thing he might squander,
“May I ausk what's that animal coming out yonder?”
The maiden a moment revolved her trim bright head:
“It's a bull!” she loud screeched, and then “ran like a whitehead.”
And the Englishman also: not swayed by fear's passion,
But simply determined to follow the fashion.
If she ran, then he ran; if she stopped, then he did;
That's fashion's rule, put in a nutshell when needed.

The bull was one fitted with Spaniards to battle:
A regular built roaring lion of cattle,
I may say, while our redbirds fly thick through the brambles:
His ancestors, mad from the blood of the shambles,
And knowing, howe'er gay their life-page began,
They would all of them some day be murdered by man,
Whene'er of the fact by blood's color reminded,
They rushed for the same, with their moral sense blinded;
And thus do they ever: though madly, sincerely
Regarding our species as cannibals, merely,
And that is “heredity”—drawn very nearly.

Thus onward he came, in his rage-livened folly:
Rushing down through the field like a car on the trolley;
His head bowing low as the fenders they bear,
And his tail like the wire-stick that drags through the air.
And his game—how they ran! not the crafty and cunning
Zoological firebrands that Samson set running
Through wheatfields of foes in his anger sublime,
Though more there were of them—could make better time.
The Englishman struggled o'er boulders and ditches,
And grieved at the thorns that were tearing his stitches
That kept on his red coat—still muttering low:
“This is very peculiar, indeed, don't you know!”
And the maid, like Dave Harum, exclaimed “Scat my cats!
I wish he had some of our ‘Beverage for Rats’!”
And then, like a red-squirrel, climbed to a tree;
And “you take that other one yonder!” screamed she.

“Thanks! I will!” said the Englishman: “just in good time!
It's quite opportune; but a beastly hard climb!
I hope you are comfortable there; and you're
Ah—what do you call it? stuck up, now, for sure!”

While the bull, with a rage his thick hide could not smother,
Would rush up at one tree, and then at the other,
And make all the grass and the pebbles and sand slide
In terrible ways that portended a landslide;
And writhed at the lightnings of anger that spurred him,
And thundered so half of the town might have heard him.

But none of it did, for a rain-cloud had come:
Not a giant of storms striking other sounds dumb,
But a slow droning drizzle, unaided by breeze,
That came by inquisitive drops through the trees,
And spattered these children of fashion and lucre,
And drove all their friends to bridge, gossip, and euchre,
And dancing and flirting—both agéd and young,
Unmindful of field-sports; so there the two hung,
Each one to a tree-limb; and still did the bull
Hang 'round them, of rage and celerity full.

And there stayed the three till the daylight had gone,
And there hung the three when the morning came on;
For while the two victims in terror sat nigh,
The bull lay and dreamed, with red blood in his eye;
While a party of search through the wide country groped
To find the young pair that so strangely eloped.

But when morning peeped on them tattered and jaded,
The red of their robes was so ragged and faded,
The bull saw no sight to be angry or glum for,
And went away wondering what he had come for.