QUIPS AND CRANKS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 771, 10 December 1886, Page 6

QUIPS AND CRANKS.

AMERICAN SATIRE ON 3IVIC CORRUPTION IN NEW YORK CITS’TBIED ESrERYTHINO. TT<t bad worked at all vocatioES and had tried • all occupations. But was always impecunious and ‘ broke ‘j Been a sDeeulatieg broker, and a funny inan and joker— And bis life had been one melancholy joke.

He had been a quack physician and a great trombone musician, And had worked upon the sewer for a year; Been a lawyer, doctor, pastor, and a famous dancing master, An editor and scribe and auctioneer;

Been a pioneer and squatter, and lived on bread and water While writing for the leading magazines ; Been an artist, sculptor, painter, and waxed thinner, weaker, fainter, On a cultured Boston diet of baked beans ;

Tried astrology and magic, been an “actor «- fierce and tragic,

As a travelling organ grinder passed the hat; Been an African explorer, who would talk and talk and bore yer, And had travelled far and wide, like ’Daniel Pratt.

He had been a med’eine mixer, with his ‘ Vital Life Elixir. 1 And dealt in pellets, purgatives, and pills -; Been a scientific healer, and a porous-plaster dealer, And could cure all diseases, aches, and ills.

He had ran an elevator, been a prestidigitator, And the famous bearded woman at ’the show; Been a medium and diviner, and a fisherman and miner, . But in none of his employments made a ‘go.’

But the hero of my ditty, settled down in New York city. Was elefeted to the Aldermanic chair, And now he’s sleek and corpulent, and-very rich and opulent—- •< A very great and bloated millionaire ! -^Tit-Bits.

The old Scotch name for a draughtboard was a ‘ dam-brod V being simply a: "Scottish nerversion from the French of "the Gallic equivalent for draught or checkers:; i.e., • jeu de dames, 1 or’fas the board is called in French) * damier. 1 ‘ Cam you show me, 1 said an old Scottish lady, entering -a Xondon linen warehouse, * a tablecloth of & dam-brod pattern? 1 (She meant, of course, simply a * checker * style). ‘ Well'! responded the astonished shopman, * we have, madam, very broad patterns, but none quite so broad as that.* The groom had pierced his carotid arteries with a carbine on hearing that a deficit in his church collections had been discovered. He was cremated.—Boston Transcript. .