And Zangra too,-but I shall weep, And let remembrance loose, Dick; Zounds! Dick, it's very odd our dads A stick about the skull is. Why should stage-learning form a part So well record the sad mistake Of him who tried at once to make Both Romeo and Coates, Dick! TO A CHILD EMBRACING HIS MOTHER. LOVE thy mother, little one! Will kiss and clasp her neck in vain. Love thy mother, little one! Gaze upon her living eyes, And mirror back her love for thee, Hereafter thou mayst shudder sighs Press her lips the while they glow And kiss them till thine own are cold. Oh, revere her raven hair! Too early Death, led on by Care, Oh! revere her raven hair! Pray for her at eve and morn, That Heaven may long the stroke defer,— For thou mayst live the hour forlorn When thou wilt ask to die with her. FRAGMENT. I HAD a dream-the summer beam Fear's darker shade took form and made Like shadows darkling in light most sparkling. The fragrant tombs amid the blooms Show'd many a name that none could claim Neighbour'd the sun amid the blue, Young Hope indeed began to read When, like her shade, black Grief was laid Then do not chide-the sunny side ( REVIEW. OPEN SESAME; OR, THE WAY TO GET MONEY. WHO WAS ONCE POOR. London : 1832. BY A RICH MAN Griffiths. SHADE of Ali Baba! what a title for a book! At the first announcement we posted up from Wanstead to Wellingtonstreet, and were fortunate enough to procure a copy before the shop-door of Thomas Griffiths was wedged up by a mob of poor gentlemen who long to be rich. We are constitutionally sanguine. A little more, and we should have hurried off to Smithfield for asses to load with our treasures, and to Aldersgate for a standard bushel to measure the sovereigns; but a prudent Morgiana of a she-friend advised us beforehand to look well into the pages; and sure enough, as in the robber's oil jars, we found a Master Catchpenny at the bottom of the whole. According to the author, there are "four hundred and fifty-three ways of making money in this metropolis on a large scale." Of all these ways he recommends you to pick one as follows: "Have you anything in your pockets? Nothing. So much the better. Get the pickaxe of resolution ready, shoulder arms, and set-to like, not a Trojan, but a straightforward City broker."-p. 7. We recollect beginning life in the same line, and it brought us almost to shouldering a literal pickaxe. Day after day we lingered at Batson's and haunted the Russia walk, with no tallow to dispose of but our own inch of candle-no bristles except those on our chin-no hemp to purchase, but a little on our own desperate account. On such noncommissioned mercantile officers the oracle is cruelly quizzical. "Summer, if a merchant or a broker,-from six to eight walk out and brace your constitution for the rest of the day ;-eight to nine, breakfast and the newspaper;-nine to five, business without any intermission.” -pp. 8, 9. With such a concern, or a share even, the oracle may safely promise that one shall be a Rothschild, with a family of Rothschildren; but how is such a brisk business to be had, if we except the profitless transfers of Mr. Figgins. "I knew a grocer who emptied and refilled fifty canisters of tea two hundred times in one morning."—p. 17. The reader will judge from this sample of ways without means, of the merits of "Open Sesame." There is an Arabian story of an enchanter who offered gold and silver, which turned out to be nothing but worthless leaves, and the author of the "Way to get Money" seems to have followed his unfeeling example. We have been cruelly deceived ourselves, and thrown a dreadful fall on our organ of acquisitiveness; and in pity to mankind, we feel bound to warn them against this intended way to the Cave of Croesus. However lauded as a magical gift in its preface, the work is anything but a talisman that will convert a poor little gudgeon in the pool of Poverty into a bouncing gold fish in the stream of Pactolus. |