you’re quite right there, my pretty PATTY. 
  Lor! ’ow that gal admires these carves!  But that’s “irrevelant,” as
      the sayin’ is;
  Master and Missis both complain ’ow dull and slow the game they’re
      playin’ is. 
  The Session?  Yah!  Give me the days, the dear old days of darling DIZZY! 
  With him and GLADSTONE on the job a chap could say “Now we are busy.” 
  But SMITH’s a slug, ’ARCOURT’s a hum, and LABBY makes a chap go squirmish. 
  Dull as ditchwater the whole thing.  One longs e’en for a Hirish skirmish;
  But PARNELL’s fo par, and his spite, ’ave knocked the sparkle out
      of PADDY. 
  No; Parlyment’s a played-out fraud, flabby and footy, flat and faddy. 
  The Season’s similar.  Season?  Bah?  By sech a name it ain’t worth
      calling. 
  Shoulders like these and carves like those was not quite made for
      pantry-sprawling;
  But wot’s the use?  Trot myself hout for ’Ebrews, or some tuppenny
      kernel? 
  No, not for JEAMES, if he is quite aweer of it!  It’s just infernal,
  The Vulgar Mix that calls itself Society.  All shoddy slyness,
  And moneybags; a “blend” as might kontamernate a Ryal ’Igness,
  Or infry-dig a Hemperor.  It won’t nick JEAMES though, not percisely;
  Better to flop in solitude than to demean one’s self unwisely. 
  Won’t ketch me selling myself off.  I must confess my ’art it ’arrers
  To see the Strorberry-Leaves go cheap—­like strorberries on low coster’s
      barrers! 
  Tuppence a pound!  Yes, that’s the cry.  It’s cheapness, that Rad fad,
      that’s done it. 
  Prime fruit ought to be scarce and dear, picked careful, and kept in
      the punnet. 
  The same with all chice things I ’old, whether ’tis footmen’s carves
      or peerages;
  But fools forget that good old rule in this yer queerest of all queer
      ages. 
  Trade bad, things in the City tight, no Court worth mentioning, queer
      scandals,
  Socierty inwaded by a lot of jumped-up Goths and Wandals;
  Swell-matches few, gurls’ chances poor, late Spring, and lots o’ sloppy
      weather,
  With that there Hinfluenza—­wich perhaps is wus than all together—­
  All over the dashed shop!  When was a Season sech a sell as this is? 
  Wot wonder that it aggeravates us all, pertikler Me and Missis? 
  Ah!  But for our “Himperial Guests” the Times’ young man names with sech
      feeling,
  I don’t know wot I should ’ave done.  A dismal dulness seems a-stealing
  Afore its time o’er every think; and now Our Guests’s gone wot reason,
  As the Times sez, for trying to perlong the Session or the Season?
  Ya-a-a-w! I shall gape my ’ed off ’ere.  The Row’s a bore, the ’Ouse a
      fetter. 
  And now the HEMP’ROR’s slung ’is ’ook, the sooner we are horf the better!