In short, wherever she turn’d the horn,
To the highly bred, or the lowly born,
The working man, who look’d over the hedge,
Or the mother nursing her infant pledge,
  The sober Quaker, averse to quarrels,
Or the Governess pacing the village through,
With her twelve Young Ladies, two and two,
Looking, as such young ladies do,
  Truss’d by Decorum and stuff’d with morals—­
Whether she listen’d to Hob or Bob,
     Nob or Snob,
     The Squire on his cob,
Or Trudge and his ass at a tinkering job,
To the “Saint” who expounded at “Little Zion”—­
Or the “Sinner” who kept “the Golden Lion”—­
The man teetotally wean’d from liquor—­
The Beadle, the Clerk, or the Reverend Vicar—­
Nay, the very Pie in its cage of wicker—­
She gather’d such meanings, double or single,
     That like the bell
     With muffins to sell,
Her ear was kept in a constant tingle!

But this was nought to the tales of shame,
The constant runnings of evil fame,
Foul, and dirty, and black as ink,
That her ancient cronies, with nod and wink,
Pour’d in her horn like slops in a sink: 
  While sitting in conclave, as gossips do,
With their Hyson or Howqua, black or green,
And not a little of feline spleen
  Lapp’d up in “Catty packages,” too,
  To give a zest of the sipping and supping;
For still by some invisible tether,
Scandal and Tea are link’d together,
  As surely as Scarification and Cupping;
Yet never since Scandal drank Bohea—­
Or sloe, or whatever it happen’d to be,
     For some grocerly thieves
     Turn over new leaves,
Without much amending their lives or their tea—­
No, never since cup was fill’d or stirr’d
Were such wild and horrible anecdotes heard,
As blacken’d their neighbors of either gender,
Especially that, which is call’d the Tender,
But, instead of the softness we fancy therewith,
Was harden’d in vice as the vice of a smith.

Women! the wretches! had soil’d and marr’d
  Whatever to womanly nature belongs;
For the marriage tie they had no regard,
Nay, sped their mates to the sexton’s yard,
  (Like Madame Laffarge, who with poisonous pinches
  Kept cutting off her L by inches)—­
And as for drinking, they drank so hard
  That they drank their flat-irons, pokers, and tongs!

The men—­they fought and gambled at fairs;
And poach’d—­and didn’t respect gray hairs—­
Stole linen, money, plate, poultry, and corses;
And broke in houses as well as horses;
Unfolded folds to kill their own mutton,—­
And would their own mothers and wives for a button: 
But not to repeat the deeds they did,
Backsliding in spite of all moral skid,
If all were true that fell from the tongue,
There was not a villager, old or young,
But deserved to be whipp’d, imprison’d, or hung,
Or sent on those travels which nobody hurries