CCIV.

Who hath not found amongst his flow’rs
A blossom too bright for this world of ours,
  Like a rose among snows of Sweden? 
But to turn again to Miss Kilmansegg,
Where must Love have gone to beg,
If such a thing as a Golden Leg
  Had put its foot in Eden!

CCV.

And yet—­to tell the rigid truth—­
Her favor was sought by Age and Youth—­
  For the prey will find a prowler! 
She was follow’d, flatter’d, courted, address’d,
Woo’d, and coo’d, and wheedled, and press’d,
By suitors from North, South, East, and West,
  Like that Heiress, in song, Tibbie Fowler!

CCVI.

But, alas! alas! for the Woman’s fate,
Who has from a mob to choose a mate! 
  ’Tis a strange and painful mystery! 
But the more the eggs, the worse the hatch;
The more the fish, the worse the catch;
The more the sparks, the worse the match;
  Is a fact in Woman’s history.

CCVII.

Give her between a brace to pick,
And, mayhap, with luck to help the trick,
She will take the Faustus, and leave the Old Nick—­
  But her future bliss to baffle,
Amongst a score let her have a voice,
And she’ll have as little cause to rejoice,
As if she had won the “Man of her choice”
  In a matrimonial raffle!

CCVIII.

Thus, even thus, with the Heiress and Hope,
Fulfilling the adage of too much rope,
  With so ample a competition,
She chose the least worthy of all the group,
Just as the vulture makes a stoop,
And singles out from the herd or troop
  The beast of the worst condition.

CCIX.

A Foreign Count—­who came incog.,
Not under a cloud, but under a fog,
  In a Calais packet’s fore-cabin,
To charm some lady British-born,
With his eyes as black as the fruit of the thorn,
And his hooky nose, and his beard half-shorn,
  Like a half-converted Rabbin.

CCX.

And because the Sex confess a charm
In the man who has slash’d a head or arm
  Or has been a throat’s undoing,
He was dress’d like one of the glorious trade,
At least when glory is off parade,
With a stock, and a frock, well trimm’d with braid,
  And frogs—­that went a-wooing.

CCXI.

Moreover, as Counts are apt to do,
On the left-hand side of his dark surtout,
At one of those holes that buttons go through,
  (To be a precise recorder,)
A ribbon he wore, or rather a scrap,
About an inch of ribbon mayhap. 
That one of his rivals, a whimsical chap,
  Described as his “Retail Order.”