grain of wheat; 310
Meat was by some pronounced unmeet,
Others thought fish most indiscreet,
And that 'twas worse than all to eat
Of vegetables, sour or sweet,
(Except, perhaps, the skin of beet,)
In such a concatenation:
One quack his button gently plucks
And murmurs, 'Biliary ducks!'
Says Knott, 'I never ate one;'
But all, though brimming full of wrath, 320
Homoeo, Allo, Hydropath,
Concurred in this--that t'other's path
To death's door was the straight one.
Still, spite of medical advice,
The ghosts came thicker, and a spice
Of mischief grew apparent;
Nor did they only come at night,
But seemed to fancy broad daylight,
Till Knott, in horror and affright,
His unoffending hair rent; 330
Whene'er with handkerchief on lap,
He made his elbow-chair a trap,
To catch an after-dinner nap,
The spirits, always on the tap,
Would make a sudden _rap, rap, rap,_
The half-spun cord of sleep to snap,
(And what is life without its nap
But threadbareness and mere mishap?) 338
As 'twere with a percussion cap
The trouble's climax capping;
It seemed a party dried and grim
Of mummies had come to visit him,
Each getting off from every limb
Its multitudinous wrapping;
Scratchings sometimes the walls ran round,
The merest penny-weights of sound;
Sometimes 'twas only by the pound
They carried on their dealing,
A thumping 'neath the parlor floor,
Thump-bump-thump-bumping o'er and o'er, 350
As if the vegetables in store
(Quiet and orderly before)
Were all together peeling;
You would have thought the thing was done
By the spirit of some son of a gun,
And that a forty-two-pounder,
Or that the ghost which made such sounds
Could be none other than John Pounds,
Of Ragged Schools the founder.
Through three gradations of affright, 360
The awful noises reached their height;
At first they knocked nocturnally,
Then, for some reason, changing quite,
(As mourners, after six months' flight,
Turn suddenly from dark to light,)
Began to knock diurnally,
And last, combining all their stocks,
(Scotland was ne'er so full of Knox,)
Into one Chaos (father of Nox,)
_Nocte pluit_--they showered knocks, 370
And knocked, knocked, knocked, eternally;
Ever upon the go, like buoys,
(Wooden sea-urchins,) all Knott's joys,
They turned to troubles and a noise
That preyed on him internally.

Soon they grew wider in their scope;
Whenever Knott a door would ope,
It would ope not, or else