“Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?”--MILTON
NEW YORK _J. S. REDFIELD, PUBLISHER_ 140 FULTON STREET 1868
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of New York.
EDWARD O. JENKINS, _PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER_, No. 20 North William St.
A woman in France got the spinal disease, And from that sad moment she had no more ease; To add to her anguish, she very soon found, Oh, horrors! her back was becoming quite round.
The spasms of physical pain she endured, Were keen, I assure you, and could not be cured; But bad as these were, it seems, on the whole, They could not compare with the pangs of her soul.
For I must inform you, O dear reader mine-- (I’m in my third verse, and indeed it is time)-- That our stylish Parisian was Fashion’s dear slave, And to its sweet service her brain and time gave.
If she had been poet or artist or sage, Or one of “the women,” so called, “of the age,” With missions to Art, or the indigent poor, Her crooked vertébra she might well endure.
For ’tis of no consequence, surely, I say, If strong-minded women who flaunt in our day Their rights to more freedom for work and for speech Are placed by disease quite beyond the world’s reach.
Such women belong to that low, common kind Who assert that an active condition of mind Or of hands (me! how vulgar!) does make, after all, What we a true woman can worthily call.
But say, of what consequence, pray, can it be If females with such vulgar notions, you see, Are forced to stop work and all bold agitations Of questions important to churches and nations
Because of a weakness of brain and of spine? (Both organs, alas! being in a _decline_.) It matters but little, if women like these, Are deprived of all usefulness, comfort, and ease.
But when a fair daughter of Fashion--a treasure, Who lives but to seek and to find her own pleasure, A victim becomes to keen pains that do rack, To pains that quite ruin the shape of her back--
Here, here is a tale that makes the heart bleed! A tale wholly fit for a poet indeed! Before I have finished, however, you’ll find That sunlight with shadow is herein combined.
At present the shadow rests over my maid, While wrapped in reflection she sits in the shade. Her brain being small, is quite like the pot Which, owing to smallness, so soon became hot.