All of the victim bad or good
In life, was in an instant crushed
To dust—­off the assailants rushed,
And none can tell from then ’till now
The hands that laid McStravick low,
Nor does he who relates the story
Know more of that occurrence gory
My history would be faithless here
Did “Happy Jimmy” not appear,
An innocent good natured soul
As ever loved the flowing bowl—­
An institution of the day
That like himself hath passed away,
Was “Happy Jimmy,” he who made
A vagrant’s life a merry trade.

CHAPTER VI.

And now, kind reader, I behold
Before me, as in days of old,
Bold Paddy Whelan, Wexford Paddy
Surely of noisy men the daddy;
A man of most Herculean form,
Who roamed through sunshine and through storm,
And sounded loud in other days
His notes in Hamnett Pinhey’s praise—­
And well he might sing with loud swell,
“The Lamb of March” deserved it well! 
A man of learning, wit, and sense,
No shallow thing of vain pretence,
The true stamp of the current guinea
Bore March’s Father, Hamnett Pinhey. 
To “Muddy Little York” went he,
The Independent and the Free
To represent with power effective
Amid the wisdom most collective,
In the old days of Compact Rule
Ere Grittism yet had gone to school;
Dalhousie District’s Archives too,
Can show what he was wont to do. 
Paddy, though not of genus ferae,
Was yet a queer lusus naturae;
His vital organs played beneath
A shield of solid bone ’till death,
Without a yielding space between,
Where ribs in other men are seen,
Though not a feathered bird, his toes
Were web’d as well the writer knows,
And joined in one in style most rare
His molars and incisors were;
His voice, when at its loudest swell,
Was like a railway whistle’s yell;
In stature he was six feet tall,
So there is Paddy for you all! 
But strike I now a strain sublime,
A touch heroic into rhyme. 
As memory doth with truth uncoil
The history of old Bob Boyle,
A British soldier, bold and free,
Of the old Ninety-Ninth was he,
Who bravely fought and ’scaped from harm,
At Lundy’s Lane and Crysler’s Farm,
And gallantly his bayonet bore,
At Fort Niagara, and the shore
Of Sackett’s Harbor trod of yore,
When “Uncle Sam,” our friend and brother,
Or cousin, kicked up such a “bother”
In 1812, and tried
In vain to lower Britain’s pride,
By cutting from her parent side,
By a Caesarean operation,
The proudest offspring of the nation! 
The Union Jack, thank heaven! still
Floats proudly over vale and hill,
Of this Dominion grand of ours;
And shattered be the vital powers,
By fatal stroke, like that which slew,
Sennacherib’s Assyrian crew,
Of him who’s traitor hand shall dare
To furl one fold that flutters there!