But still as to walking so stylishly, it’s pleasanter
    done about town. 
There’s a way, I know, to avoid the stiles, and
    that’s by a walk in a lane,
And I did find a very nice shady one, but I never
    dared go again;
For who should I meet but a rampaging bull, that
    wouldn’t be kept in the pound,
A trying to toss the whole world at once, by sticking
    his horns in the ground? 
And that, by the bye, is another thing, that pulls
    rural pleasures down,
Ev’ry day in the country is cattle-day, and there’s
    only two up in town. 
Then I’ve rose with the sun, to go brushing away
    at the first early pearly dew,
And to meet Aurory, or whatever’s her name, and
    I always got wetted through;
My shoes are like sops, and I caught a bad cold,
    and a nice draggle-tail to my gown,
That’s not the way that we bathe our feet, or
    wear our pearls, up in town! 
As for picking flow’rs, I have tried at a hedge,
    sweet eglantine roses to snatch,
But, mercy on us! how nettles will sting, and how
    the long brambles do scratch;
Besides hitching my hat on a nasty thorn that
    tore all the bows from the crown,
One may walk long enough without hats branching
    off, or losing one’s bows about town. 
But worse than that, in a long rural walk, suppose
    that it blows up for rain,
And all at once you discover yourself in a real St.
    Swithin’s Lane;
And while you’re running all ducked and drown’d,
    and pelted with sixpenny drops,
“Fine weather,” you hear the farmers say; “a
    nice growing show’r for the crops!”
But who’s to crop me another new hat, or grow
    me another new gown? 
For you can’t take a shilling fare with a plough as
    you do with the hackneys in town.

Then my nevys too, they must drag me off to go
    with them gathering nuts,
And we always set out by the longest way and
    return by the shortest cuts. 
Short cuts, indeed!  But it’s nuts to them, to get
    a poor lustyish aunt
To scramble through gaps or jump over a
    ditch, when they’re morally certain she can’t,—­
For whenever I get in some awkward scrape, and
    it’s almost daily the case,
Tho’ they don’t laugh out, the mischievous brats,
    I see the hooray! in their face.

There’s the other day, for my sight is short, and
    I saw what was green beyond,
And thought it was all terry firmer and grass till
    I walked in the duckweed pond: 
Or perhaps when I’ve pully-hauled up a bank
    they see me come launching down,
As none but a stout London female can do as is
    come a first time out of town. 
Then how sweet, some say, on a mossy bank a
    verdurous seat to find,
But for my part I always found it a joy that
    brought a repentance behind;
For the juicy grass with its nasty green has stained