As Mister B. and Mrs. B.
  One night were sitting down to tea,
  With toast and muffins hot—­
  They heard a loud and sudden bounce,
  That made the very china flounce,
  They could not for a time pronounce
  If they were safe or shot—­
  For memory brought a deed to match
  At Deptford done by night—­
  Before one eye appear’d a Patch
  In t’other eye a Blight!

  To be belabour’d out of life,
  Without some small attempt at strife,
  Our nature will not grovel;
  One impulse mov’d both man and dame,
  He seized the tongs—­she did the same,
  Leaving the ruffian, if he came,
  The poker and the shovel. 
  Suppose the couple standing so,
  When rushing footsteps from below
  Made pulses fast and fervent;
  And first burst in the frantic cat,
  All steaming like a brewer’s rat,
  And then—­as white as my cravat—­
  Poor Mary May, the servant!

  Lord how the couple’s teeth did chatter,
  Master and Mistress both flew at her,
  “Speak!  Fire? or Murder?  What’s the matter?”
  Till Mary getting breath,
  Upon her tale began to touch
  With rapid tongue, full trotting, such
  As if she thought she had too much
  To tell before her death:—­

  “We was both, Ma’am, in the wash-house, Ma’am, a-standing at our tubs,
  And Mrs. Round was seconding what little things I rubs;
  ‘Mary,’ says she to me, ’I say’—­and there she stops for coughin,
  ’That dratted copper flue has took to smokin very often,
  But please the pigs,’—­for that’s her way of swearing in a passion,
  ‘I’ll blow it up, and not be set a coughin in this fashion!’
  Well down she takes my master’s horn—­I mean his horn for loading. 
  And empties every grain alive for to set the flue exploding. 
  ‘Lawk, Mrs. Round?’ says I, and stares, ’that quantum is unproper,
  I’m sartin sure it can’t not take a pound to sky a copper;
  You’ll powder both our heads off, so I tells you, with its puff,
  But she only dried her fingers, and she takes a pinch of snuff.’ 
  Well, when the pinch is over—­’Teach your Grandmother to suck
  A powder horn,’ says she—­Well, says I, I wish you luck. 
  Them words sets up her back, so with her hands upon her hips,
  ‘Come,’ says she, quite in a huff, ’come keep your tongue inside your lips;
  Afore ever you was born, I was well used to things like these;
  I shall put it in the grate, and let it burn up by degrees.’ 
  So in it goes, and Bounce—­O Lord! it gives us such a rattle,
  I thought we both were cannonized, like Sogers in a battle! 
  Up goes the copper like a squib, and us on both our backs,
  And bless the tubs, they bundled off, and split all into cracks
  Well, there I fainted dead away, and might have been cut shorter,
  But Providence was kind, and brought me to with scalding water
  I first looks round for Mrs. Round, and