ABSTRACT
THE COCK AND THE BULL You see this pebble-stone? It’s a thing I bought Of a bit of a chit of a boy i’ the mid o’ the dayI like to dock the smaller parts-o’-speech, As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur (You catch the paronomasia, play o’ words?) Did, rather, i’ the pre-Landseerian days. Well, to my muttons. I purchased the concern, And clapt it i’ my poke, and gave for same By way, to-wit, of barter or exchange-‘Chop’ was my snickering dandiprat’s own termOne shilling and fourpence, current coin o’ the realm. O-n-e and f-o-u-r four Pence, one and fourpence-you are with me, Sir?— What hour it skills not: ten or eleven o’ the clock, One day (and what a roaring day it was!) In February, eighteen sixty nine, Alexandrina Victoria, Fidei Hm-hm-how runs the jargon? being on throne. Such, sir, are all the facts, succinctly put, The basis or substratum-what you willOf the impending eighty thousand lines. ‘Not much in ‘em either,’ quoth perhaps simple Hodge. But there’s a superstructure. Wait a bit.
