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Thomas Chandler Haliburton
Nothing to Eat

Mrs. Merdle Discourseth of the necessity of good Wine and other Matters

 
   So while we are eating the fruits of the vine,
   Don’t let us forget such a health giving juice,
   As Champagne, or Sherbet, or other good wine,
   Nor sin by neglecting its ‘temperate use.’
 
 
   Now Sherbet, my husband extols to the skies,
   With me though, my stomach is weak and won’t bear it:
   And Sherry, though sometimes affecting my eyes,
   A bottle with pleasure we’ll open and share it.
 
 
   Ha, ha, well-a-day—what a queer world to live in,
   If one were contented on little to dine,
   We need not be longing another to be in,
   Where women, they tell us, exist without wine;
   Where husbands are happy and women content;
   Where dresses, though gauzy, are fit for the street;
   Where no one is wretched with purses unbent,
   With nothing to wear and nothing to eat.
 
 
   Where women no longer are treated la Turk,
   Where husbands descended from Saxon or Norman,
   For women when sickly are willing to work,
   And not long for Utah and pleasures la Mormon—
   Where men freely marry and live with their wives,
   And not live as you do, mon Colonel, so single.
 
 
   Such wretched and dinnerless bachelor lives;
   You don’t know the pleasure there is in the tingle
   Of ears pricked by lectures, la curtain, au Caudle,
   Or noise of young Dinewells beginning to toddle;
   While plodding all day with your paper and quills,
   And copy, and proof sheets, and work for the printer,
   Pray what do you know of the housekeeper’s bills,
   And other such ‘pleasures of hope’ for the winter?
 
 
   You men, selfish creatures, think all of the care
   Of living and keeping yourselves in existence,
   Is due to your own daily labor, and share,
   From breakfast to dinner of business persistance;
   While woman is either a plaything or drudge,
   According to station of wealth or position,
   Which men help along with a word or a nudge
   To heaven high up or low down to perdition.
 
 
   But what was I saying of a world free from care,
   Of eating and drinking and dresses to wear?
 
 
   Where women by husbands are never tormented,
   And never asked money where husbands dissented?
   And never see others, their rivals, in fashion ahead,
   And never have doctors—a woman’s great dread—
   And nothing, I hope, like my own indigestion,
   To torment and starve them, as this one does me,
   And keep them from sipping—forgive the suggestion—
   The nectar etherial they drink for their tea.
 

Mrs. Merdle Suggesteth that Dinner being finished, the Gentlement will Smoke. In the meantime, she Discourseth

 
   “Now Merdle—now Colonel—I know you are waiting.
   And thinking my talking to eating’s a bar,
   Still hoping, by tasting, my appetite sating,
   Will give you the license to smoke a cigar.
 
 
   Well then, I’ve done now, and hope too you’ve dined,
   As well as down town where you dine for a shilling,
   At Taylor’s, or Thompson’s, or one of the kind,
   Where mortals are flocking each day for their filling;
   Or else at the Astor where bachelors quarter,
   Where port holes for windows give light to the room,
   Far out of the region of Eve’s every daughter,
   So high they are stuck up away toward the moon.
 
 
   Though as for the ‘stuck up’ no walls built of brick,
   Or granite, or marble, or dirty red sand,
   Could stick up a man who himself’s but a stick,
   An inch above where he would naturally stand.
 
 
   To witness the truth of this final assertion,
   I call you to witness the sticks at the door,
   Where they make it a daily, a ‘manly’ diversion,
   To ogle each woman, and sometimes do more,
   Who passes the hotel that’s named by a saint,
   Where boorish bad manners give room for complaint.
 
 
   Where idlers and loafers, with gamblers a few,
   Make up for the nonce the St. Nicholas crew.
 
 
   The ‘outside barbarians,’ I freely confess,
   Who ogle our faces and ogle our dress,
   Who spit where we walk as dirty a puddle
   As bipeds can make when their brains are ‘a muddle,’
   Do not prove the inside is as dirty as they are,
   Or else the gods help all the ladies who stay there.
 
 
   Why any prefer in a hotel to stay,
   Instead of a house of their choosing to own,
   Is just to avoid all the trouble, they say,
   That servants to give us are certainly prone,
   I’m sure if a tyranny more terrible prevails,
   In Austria or other despotic domain,
   My memory where most certainly fails,
   That servants and milliners over us gain,
   Just here in New York, and the more is the pity,
   Where Wood is the Mogul that governs the city.
 

Mrs. Merdle, having “Nibbled a Little” for two Hours at Dinner, retireth from the Table unsatisfied

 
   “Impatient—oh yes—just the way with you men!
 
 
   I never have time to half finish my eating
   Ere Merdle is done; such a fidget is then,
   He’d starve me I think rather ‘n miss of a meeting
   Where brokers preside o’er the fate of the stocks,
   As Pales presided o’er shepherds and flocks.
 
 
   Now while you are smoking—what nonsense and folly—
   I’ll go to my room.—don’t say No, for I must—
   Put on a new dress, with assistance of Molly,
   And then with a little strong tea and a crust,
   My strength I may hope for a walk will be able
   As far as the gate, and a very short ride,
   To give me a relish again for the table—
   What else do we live for in this world beside?”