University of Virginia Library

A LIKENESS TAKEN FROM REAL LIFE.

Know ye the man who is empty and proud?
Know ye the man who is noisy and loud?
Know ye the man whose stentorian lungs
Could give motion and force to four dozen of tongues?
Know ye the man to whom Nature, still kind,
To make up for the want of a heart and a mind,
Has given a visage of fifty-cheek power,
To help him to sputter out froth by the hour,
And talk till his audience no longer can sit,
Quite sick of the trash which he passes for wit?
Know ye the man who, to gain his own ends,
Can wheedle, and diddle, and cozen his friends,
And, after obtaining the favour he wants,
Can turn round and pay them with jeers and with taunts?
Know ye the man who, to gain him a rib
Possessing the needful, could coin a neat fib,
Pretending to be what he really was not,
Till the trusting one's cash in his clutches he got,—
And, now that he reckons his fortune half made,
Can laugh at the innocent dupe he betrayed,—
Who fondles to fleece her—then treats her with scorn,
And who yet will leave her to languish forlorn?
Know ye the man fraught with bombast and foam,
Who, courting applause, through the country can roam,
Displaying the learning which others have shown,
To make it go down, when he can, as his own;
Who into good company gets himself bored,
Still making a fuss that he may be adored;
But if to engross the whole talk he should fail,
Whose plan is to bully, browbeat, or turn tail?
Know ye the man—But I need not say more
Than this: if you e'er meet a terrible bore,
A bore who will pester your soul to the quick,
And dose you with dogmas until you're quite sick,
An ignorant dabbler in logic and law,
A discarded fiscal, who hunts for eclat,
A pompous practiser of fudge and clap-trap,
A fopling, a fibber,—then, that is the chap.