And oiliest skull of oily scullion. 
No great man died but this they did do,
They begged his cranium of his widow: 
No murderer died by law disaster,
But they took off his sconce in plaster;
For thereon they could show depending,
“The head and front of his offending”: 
How that his philanthropic bump
Was mastered by a baser lump;
For every bump (these wags insist)
Has its direct antagonist,
Each striving stoutly to prevail,
Like horses knotted tail to tail! 
And many a stiff and sturdy battle
Occurs between these adverse cattle,
The secret cause, beyond all question,
Of aches ascribed to indigestion,—­
Whereas ’tis but two knobby rivals
Tugging together like sheer devils,
Till one gets mastery, good or sinister,
And comes in like a new prime-minister.

Each bias in some master node is:—­
What takes M’Adam where a road is,
To hammer little pebbles less? 
His organ of Destructiveness. 
What makes great Joseph so encumber
Debate? a lumping lump of Number: 
Or Malthas rail at babies so? 
The smallness of his Philopro—­
What severs man and wife? a simple
Defect of the Adhesive pimple: 
Or makes weak women go astray? 
Their bumps are more in fault than they.

These facts being found and set in order
By grave M. D.’s beyond the Border,
To make them for some months eternal,
Were entered monthly in a journal,
That many a northern sage still writes in,
And throws his little Northern Lights in,
And proves and proves about the phrenos,
A great deal more than I or he knows: 
How Music suffers, par exemple,
By wearing tight hats round the temple;
What ills great boxers have to fear
From blisters put behind the ear;
And how a porter’s Veneration
Is hurt by porter’s occupation;
Whether shillelaghs in reality
May deaden Individuality;
Or tongs and poker be creative
Of alterations in th’ Amative;
If falls from scaffolds make us less
Inclined to all Constructiveness: 
With more such matters, all applying
To heads—­and therefore head-ifying.

THE WEE MAN.

A ROMANCE.

It was a merry company,
  And they were just afloat,
When lo! a man, of dwarfish span,
  Came up and hailed the boat.

“Good morrow to ye, gentle folks,
  And will you let me in? 
A slender space will serve my case,
  For I am small and thin.”

They saw he was a dwarfish man,
  And very small and thin;
Not seven such would matter much,
  And so they took him in.

They laughed to see his little hat,
  With such a narrow brim;
They laughed to note his dapper coat,
  With skirts so scant and trim.

But barely had they gone a mile,
  When, gravely, one and all
At once began to think the man
  Was not so very small: