The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

72 : THE STEAM PACKET. If you know tenants for a pate that’s to be let unfurnished, My upper storey is as empty as a workus kitchen :— The wit, like fire-irons, must be polished, and the humour burnished, For light and shinin’ ornaments my head ’s not over rich in. How many people go to sea, and yet see nothin’ raly ; But I have seen the Bay of Naples, and the Bey cf Tripoli; Vith the Moroccy pirates I have breakfasted so gaily— You need not shake your ea my sriends ny tongue could ne’er let slip a lie. I wisited in Green’s balloon the distant realms of Cloudland ; I vent to Philadelphy in the fust aerial carriage ; And thence in six and thirty hours I got to China’s proud land, Vhere vith Princess So-Sli I formed a wery happy marriage. For six long years I lived vith her, till Death came in and her pent In a snug coffin—vhich I envied—’twas so wery handsome. As I returned to England’s shore, I saw the great sea-serpent, Attended by some smaller snakes, of which I tried to land some. How wain wos each attempt! They wos so slippery vith moistur’— Alas! I slipped and sank unto the bottom of the Red Sea ; But there I had the luck to find a most enormous oyster, Vithin whose shells there wos a pearl, much bigger than your head, see ! t And now I’ve left off trav’ling, and am buckled to a vidder : I drink my glass of grog at ease, and buy pine-apple rum for ’t ;— Of my wife’s love I have nine pledges, (she does what I bid her)— The children scream and fight all day, and are their parents’ conifort.._ It is impossible to say how long this strain might have continued had not Captain Pentonville suddenly invoked his domestic, at the top of his voice and the staircase, from the depths of the kitchen, to assist him in performing his night-toilet. This sudden interruption broke up the pleasant party down-stairs; and in a short time the hotel was wrapt up in the deepest silence. The stars of heaven smiled upon the . placid slumber of the Luminaries of earth: and if a few of the former shone in the Milky Way, no inconsiderable number of the latter was steeped in generous wine. Gomichbooks-com (9)