Page:A Selection of Original Songs, Scraps, Etc., by Ned Farmer (3rd ed.).djvu/127

 

For such encounters; and 'twas plain
The meeting should be call'd again,
To reconsider
His proposition: "For," said he,
"My children fatherless may be—
My wife a 'widder.'"

Thus did his martial soul recoil;
But only, mark ye, for a while;
For Courage now
Came to the rescue, and exclaimed,
"Shall Crump of Nettleford be shamed,
Or break his vow?"

"Rather than that," brave Crump replies,
"Come all the ghosts before my eyes
That ever haunted
This wicked world since it was made;
I say again. Let all parade,
I'll not be daunted."

To the wife of his bosom, he next wends his way,
With a kind of misgiving as to what she might say,
For Matilda, his uxor, as often we find,
Had a way, as she called it, of "speaking her mind!"
When she saw with affright,
That her husband looked white,
She said, "Anthony Crump, you have been and got 'tight,'"