om'd to her!)
was at Enfield, which she was in summertime, and owed her health to its
sun and genial influences, she wisited (with young lady-like
impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the
yearnling!), and gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into
the parlour our two maids uproarious. "O ma'am, who do you think Miss
Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?" "A
child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity. "It's the
man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing." Miss Ouldcroft was
staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made
her go and take her leave of her _protegee_ (which I only spell with a g
because I can't make a pretty j). I thought, if she went no more, the
Abactor or Abactor's wife (vide Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard
something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers
actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, last, and
only hope of mutton-pie), which he never came to eat, and thence
inferred his guilt. _Per occasionem cujus_ I framed the sonnet; observe
its elaborate construction. I was four days about it.

THE GYPSY'S MALISON

Suck, baby, suck, Mother's love grows by giving,
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting;
Black Manhood comes, when riotous guilty living
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.
Kiss, baby, kiss, Mother's lips shine by kisses,
Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings;
Black Manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses
Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings.
Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces,
Choke the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging;
Black Manhood comes, when violent lawless courses
Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging.
So sang a wither'd Sibyl energetical,
And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical.

Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis
a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure
of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery
annual? forsooth, 'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who
would so be shocked, bed dom'd! as if mothers were such sort of
logicians as to infer the future hanging of _their_ child from the
theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hange