4
No matter whether in war or peace,
Men can do whatever they please.
A curious tale I will unfold.
To all of you as I was told,
About a soldier stout and bold,
Whose wife, ’tis said, was an arrant scold.
At Waterloo he lost an arm,
Which gave him pain and great alarm ;
But he soon got well, and grew quite calm.
For a shilling a-day was a sort of balm.
The story goes, on every night,
His wife would bang him left and right ;
So he determin’d out of spite,
To have an arm, cost what it might.
He went at once, strange it may seem,
To have one made to work by steam,
For a ray of hope began to gleam,
That force of arms would win her esteem.
The limb was finish’d, and fix’d unto
His stump of a shoulder neat and true.
You’d have thought it there by nature grew,
For it stuck to its place as tight as glue.
