Thomas Chandler Haliburton - Nothing to Eat

THOUGH famine prevails not at all in the city;
Though none of starvation have died in the street;
Yet many there are now exciting our pity,
Who’re daily complaining of nothing to eat.

The every-day cry and the every-day fare,
That’s every day heard where the Livewells are dining,
Is nothing to eat, or else nothing to wear,
Which naked and starving rich Merdles are whining.

There’s Kitty Malone—Mrs. Merdle ‘tis now—
Was ever on earth here before such a sinner;
Protesting, excusing and swearing a vow,
She’d nothing worth eating to give us for dinner.

Why Kitty, if starving for want of a meal,
And had’nt a cent in the world to buy meat,
You wouldn’t exclaim with a more pious zeal,
“I’m dying of hunger—we’ve nothing to eat!!”

The point I advance, if it need confirmation,
I’ll prove by a witness that few will dispute,
A pink of perfection and truth in the naion
Where fashion and folly are all of a suit.

‘Tis “Merdle the banker”—or rather his wife,
Whose fashion, religion, or music, or dress,
Is followed, consulted, by many through life,
As pilots are followed by ships in distress;
For money’s a pilot, a master, a king,
Which men follow blindly through quicksands and shoals,
Where pilots their ships in a moment might fling
To destruction the vessel and cargo and souls.

‘Twas money made Kitty of fashion the queen,
And fortune oft lends queens the scepter;
So fortune and fashion with this one we’ve seen
Her money and fortune in fashion has kept her;
While slaves of the queen with her hoops rules the day,
Expanding their utmost extent of expansion,
And mandates of fashion most freely obey,
And would if it bid all their souls to extinction.

But what “lady patron” as queen holds the sway;
Or sweeping, whose hoops in the street are most sweeping;
The burthen is not of this truth-telling lay,
That should in its reading the world set to weeping,
While telling the suff’rings from head to the feet,
Of poor human beings with nothing to eat .

Another expounder of life’s thorny mazes
Excited our pity at fortune’s hard fare,
And troubled the city’s most troublesome places,
While singing his ditty of “Nothing to Wear.”

“A tale worth the telling,”’ though I tell for the same,
Great objects of pity we see in the street,
“With nothing to wear, though a legion by name,
Is not to buy clothing, but something to eat.

And now by your leave I will try to expound it,
In truth as it is and the way that I found it.

My dinner, sometimes, like things transcendental
And things more substantial, like women and wine
A thing is, uncertain, and quite accidental,
And sometimes I wonder, “Oh! where shall I dine?”

It was when reflecting one evening of late,
What tavern or hotel or dining-room skinner,
With table cloth dirty and dirtier plate,
Would give me a nausea and call it a dinner,
I met with Jack Merdle, a name fully known
As good for a million in Stock-gamblers’ Street,
Where none but a nabob or forger high flown
With “bulls” or with “bears” need look for a seat.

Now Merdle this day having toss’d with his horns
The bears that were pulling so hard at the stocks,
And gored every bull that was treading his corns,
Had lined all his pockets with “plenty of rocks,”
And home now was driving at “two forty” speed,
Where dinner was waiting—“a jolly good feed.”

Himself feeling happy, he knew by my looks,
A case full of sadness and deep destitution
Was present in person, not read of in books,
Appealing in pity for an alms institution.

The case, too, was urgent, for there stood a sinner,
Whose fate hung on chance—a chance for his dinner;
A chance for all mortals, with truth I assert,
Who eat where his chance was, to counteract fate,
“To eat during life each a peck of pure dirt”
By eating at once the whole peck from one plate.
For true when I think of the places we eat at,
Or rather the places by hunger when driven
We rush in and swallow our bread and our meat at,
A bushel good measure in life will be given
To those who are living a “boarding-house life,”
Or those who are driven by fortune to journey,
And eat when we must with so dirty a knife,
I wish’t could be done by the power of attorney;
Or where you must eat in a place called “saloon;”
Or “coffee-house” synonym of whisky and rum;
(I wish all the breed were sent off to the moon,
And earth was well clear of the coffee-house scum;)
Or where “Restauration” hangs out for sign,
At bar-room or cellar or dirty back room,
Where dishcloths for napkins are thought extra fine,
And table cloths look as though washed with a broom;
Where knives waiters spit on and wipe on their sleeves,
And plates needing polish, with coat tails are cleaned;
Where priests dine with harlots, and judges with thieves,
And mayors with villains his worship has screened.

And what do you eat in the mess there compounded?
For roast beef, the gravy the soap-man should claim—
The soup some odd things might turn up if sounded,
And other “made-dishes” might turn up the same.

Decoctions that puzzle your chemical skill,
You get if you call either coffee or tea;
And milk that is made with and tastes of the swill,
As like milk, as wine is that often we see
Is like to the juice of the grape in perfection,
Or like as the candidate after election
Is like the fair thing that we hoped or expected
Before the base thief was exposed or detected;
As like truth and virtue—and more is the pity—
The men we elected to rule our own city.

In “council” while sitting, though “common” we call them,
In common opinion, if people at large
Are’s common in morals, no worse could befal ‘em
If Satan should take them at once in his charge.

If food as their filth was as plenty for diet,
No lack would they feel of the coveted cash,
Or power they maintain with the power of a riot,
When heads of opponents are served up as hash
By Star-chamber cooks of the club “restoration,”
That rules now the city and would rule the nation,
If “Sachems” were willing the “Wigwam” to yield,
And give the arch-traitor a fair fighting field.