PACHHOFROTTO: AND HOW HE WORKED HIMSELF INTO

Otago Witness, Issue 2251, 22 April 1897, Page 39

PACHHOFROTTO : AND HOW HE WORKED HIMSELF INTO

A TEMPER. , By the Author of "The Fpiung and the Brook " and Other Intelligibilities.

Who will may hear my simple story told ; Story, mark you : simple, do ye note ? That lean-gutted, hectic rasoal there, Sub- and superciliously black, He pranks it out with so it is, or was, Or might be^ — lying tipstaff jack-a-dandy — The merest flddle-f addle ! Whereas the real

case (Aud wherefore not, insulse, since 'tis ao ?) 1' sober fact and deed was ever thus-wise — So had he said, too, had tbe judge but asked

him: He skips him up upon his radiate roundlets, (I, on mine) with bearings well annoint, And circumrotatorials nigh on bursting (Aud had, had I been handy wi*h a pricker 1' faith, though that be neither there nor here) ; We both — that candle-end, that is, and I — Advanced contrariwise, pncyclioal, (Mark you the quibble ?) met i' the middle, And — quid sequitur ? in tbe vulg*r, follows ? A thing for thingumbob of four to augur, And jet no oracle — or say a numskull, Hop-o'-my-thumb, Jaok-i'-the-green, or what

not— • A smash of course, in short, a cataclysm, With costal'and clavicular — what shall I say ? Ditjunotiou P Hardly ; that were understating Where accuracy, though it matters not So as in the calculus, yet matters ; Sej unction rather, fracture, breach, caesura, What you will ; or shall we say, an'b please

you, Avulson of the muscular What-you-call-ems P So far the case is simple — plain as pikestaff, Though yonder gig-lampQd, logic - chopping

knave Must needs churn up the cerebra of judge And jury with obfuscating quidlibets And jSue-spun nihil-ad-rem probatum est Of buckled wheel, contorted brake and pedal, Spoke and tyre, and other such sipidities. Say'st thou what, mooncalf P Will no prtseccs

stop That fpoi's Boeotian orifice of thine ? A plain unvarnished tale suits not thy book ; But thou must wrap thy copious meaning up In vague, round-mouthed v oracular ambages, With phrase all intertwist in syntax sinaosifcies, Hiatuf, quip, interca'ated afterthought, Sage hum-and-haw and stuttering aposiopesis — A monstrous jargon, fits nor man nor devil. Bat I — well, plainest aaid and soonest beat — With these last simple words, without or

verbiage Or slipslop, windy circumstance of speech — I leave the tbiog to them who wot to judge. t Who knows ? For providence has curious

ways, Or surely else the chaps of earth's dead hopes Wero torely cloyed with lean isosceleses And vast eruptions of thrasonical Fate — Lean-fingered, choppy, filaraent-clippiug jade ! (Though that again depends on how or whither, Or why or when or where the catspaw is.) So, clear as lymph of Nilus stands the case ; To who has oars is Pacchofrotfco'a story told.