Lull’d by this vague assurance,
  The friends and patrons of the sable tribe
    Continued to subscribe,
And waited, waited on with much endurance—­
Many a frugal sister, thrifty daughter—­
Many a stinted widow, pinching mother—­
With income by the tax made somewhat shorter,
Still paid implicitly her crown per quarter,
Only to hear as ev’ry year came round,
That Mr. Treasurer had spent her pound;
And as she loved her sable brother,
That Mr. Treasurer must have another!

But, spite of pounds or guineas,
    Instead of giving any hint
    Of turning to a neutral tint,
The plaguy Negroes and their piccaninnies
Were still the color of the bird that caws—­
Only some very aged souls
Showing a little gray upon their polls,
    Like daws!

    However, nothing clashed
By such repeated failures, or abashed,
The Court still met;—­the Chairman and Directors,
  The Secretary, good at pen and ink,
  The worthy Treasurer, who kept the chink,
    And all the cash Collectors;
With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous,
  Without whose help, no charlatan alive,
  Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive,
Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous—­
Those good and easy innocents in fact,
  Who willingly receiving chaff for corn,
As pointed out by Butler’s tact,
Still find a secret pleasure in the act
  Of being pluck’d and shorn!

However, in long hundreds there they were,
  Thronging the hot, and close, and dusty court,
To hear once more addresses from the Chair,
    And regular Report. 
Alas! concluding in the usual strain,
  That what with everlasting wear and tear,
  The scrubbing-brushes hadn’t got a hair—­
The brooms—­mere stumps—­would never serve again—­
The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds,
    The towels worn to threads,
The tubs and pails too shattered to be mended—­
  And what was added with a deal of pain,
  But as accounts correctly would explain,
Tho’ thirty thousand pounds had been expended—­
  The Blackamoors had still been wash’d in vain!

“In fact, the Negroes were as black as ink,
Yet, still as the Committee dared to think,
And hoped the proposition was not rash,
A rather free expenditure of cash—­”
But ere the prospect could be made more sunny—­
  Up jump’d a little, lemon-colored man,
  And with an eager stammer, thus began,
In angry earnest, though it sounded funny: 
“What!  More subscriptions!  No—­no—­no,—­not I!”
“You have had time—­time—­time enough to try! 
They WON’T come white! then why—­why—­why—­why,
    More money?”

“Why!” said the Chairman, with an accent bland,
And gentle waving of his dexter hand,
“Why must we have more dross, and dirt, and dust,
  More filthy lucre, in a word, more gold—­
  The why, sir, very easily is told,
Because Humanity declares we must! 
We’ve scrubb’d the negroes till we’ve nearly killed ’em,
  And finding that we cannot wash them white,
  But still their nigritude offends the sight,
    We mean to gild ’em!”