The Martyr.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue III, 18 July 1903, Page 209

The Martyr.

One night (when Meg was in her bed A-dreainiitg dreams with Moll) The dolls of all the neighbours called To visit Peg and Poll. Ou every chair there perched and sat, On every stool, a doll. Their cifrls were brushed, .their sashes tied. Their faces fair and clean; They carried fans and handkerchiefs, The cutest ever seen; And some had come in China silk And some in velveteen. And all of them, yes, every one Had brought a tale to tell About the "horrid little girl” Who hadn’t used her well; Who’d treated her with cruelties Beyond a parallel! Who’d washed her twenty times a day And dressed her twenty more, Who’d lost her sox and mussed her frocks And dropped her on the floor, And tagged her every minute since She left the dolly store! From all around the room at once Arose a deaf’uing din. And Peg, abetting, told how Meg Had struck her with a pin; And Poll, how Moll had combed her hair Until ’twas fairly thin. Now, as it came about, the while That little Meg and Moll Were being thus outrageously Abused by Peg and Poll, There sat in that fair company An awful looking doll — Her eyes and nose were battered in, Her cheeks were wan and worn, Her head was bare of hair as though it had been shaved and shorn; The clothes she wore w’ere rent to rags, And e’en the rags were torn; Iler legs were broken at the knees As in some mortal fray; One arm was hanging by a thread, And one was off to stay, While through a hole within her side Her sawdust ebbed away. She listened to the discontent, And then, in voice that broke For want of language to express Her state of feeling, spoke: “Your ignorance, my friends,” she said “Would very tears provoke! “I did not come to tell my past To any living toy, But I beseech you — look at me, And bless your lot of joy! Oh, dwell upon your mercies—l Was given to a Boy!”