But this, alas! from her loss of hearing,
Was all a seal’d book to Dame Eleanor Spearing;
  And often her tears would rise to their founts—­
Supposing a little scandal at play
’Twixt Mrs. O’Fie and Mrs. An Fait—­
  That she couldn’t audit the Gossips’ accounts. 
’Tis true, to her cottage still they came,
And ate her muffins just the same,
And drank the tea of the widow’d Dame,
And never swallow’d a thimble the less
Of something the Reader is left to guess,
For all the deafness of Mrs. S.,
  Who saw them talk, and chuckle, and cough,
But to see and not share in the social flow,
She might as well have lived, you know,
In one of the houses in Owen’s Row,
  Near the New River Head, with its water cut off

And yet the almond-oil she had tried,
And fifty infallible things beside,
Hot, and cold, and thick, and thin,
Dabb’d, and dribbled, and squirted in: 
But all remedies fail’d; and though some it was clear
      (Like the brandy and salt
      We now exalt)
Had made a noise in the public ear,
She was just as deaf as ever, poor dear!

At last—­one very fine day in June—­
      Suppose her sitting,
      Busily knitting,
And humming she didn’t quite know what tune;
  For nothing she heard but a sort of a whizz,
Which, unless the sound of the circulation,
Or of Thoughts in the process of fabrication,
By a Spinning-Jennyish operation,
  It’s hard to say what buzzing it is. 
However, except that ghost of a sound,
She sat in a silence most profound—­
The cat was purring about the mat,
But her Mistress heard no more of that
Than if it had been a boatswain’s cat;
And as for the clock the moments nicking,
The Dame only gave it credit for ticking. 
The bark of her dog she did not catch;
Nor yet the click of the lifted latch;
Nor yet the creak of the opening door;
Nor yet the fall of a foot on the floor—­
But she saw the shadow that crept on her gown
And turn’d its skirt of a darker brown.

And lo! a man! a Pedlar! ay, marry,
With the little back-shop that such tradesmen carry
Stock’d with brooches, ribbons, and rings,
Spectacles, razors, and other odd things,
For lad and lass, as Autolycus sings;
A chapman for goodness and cheapness of ware,
Held a fair dealer enough at a fair,
But deem’d a piratical sort of invader
By him we dub the “regular trader,”
Who—­luring the passengers in as they pass
By lamps, gay panels, and mouldings of brass,
And windows with only one huge pane of glass,
And his name in gilt characters, German or Roman,—­
If he isn’t a Pedlar, at least he’s a Showman!

However, in the stranger came,
And, the moment he met the eyes of the Dame,
Threw her as knowing a nod as though
He had known her fifty long years ago;
And presto! before she could utter “Jack”—­
Much less “Robinson”—­open’d his pack—­
  And then from amongst his portable gear,
With even more than a Pedlar’s tact,—­
(Slick himself might have envied the act)—­
Before she had time to be deaf, in fact—­
  Popp’d a Trumpet into her ear.