PART I.

SHOWING HOW HE BUILT HIS HOUSE AND HIS WIFE MOVED INTO IT.

My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott, From business snug withdrawn, Was much contented with a lot That would contain a Tudor cot 'Twixt twelve feet square of gardenplot,

And twelve feet more of lawn.

He had laid business on the shelf

To give his taste expansion, And, since no man, retired with pelf,

The building mania can shun, Knott, being middle-aged himself, Resolved to build (unhappy elf!) A mediæval mansion.

He called an architect in counsel;

"I want," said he, "a-you know what,

(You are a builder, I am Knott,)

A thing complete from chimney-pot Down to the very grounsel;

Here's a half-acre of good land; Just have it nicely mapped and planned

And make your workmen drive on ; Meadow there is, and upland too, And I should like a water-view, D' you think you could contrive one? (Perhaps the pump and trough would do,

If painted a judicious blue?) The woodland I've attended to; (He meant three pines stuck up askew,

Two dead ones and a live one.)

"A pocket-full of rocks 't would take To build a house of free-stone,

But then it is not hard to make

What nowadays is the stone;
The cunning painter in a trice
Your house's outside petrifies,
And people think it very gneiss
Without inquiring deeper;

My money never shall be thrown
Away on such a deal of stone,
When stone of deal is cheaper."

And so the greenest of antiques

Was reared for Knott to dwell in:
The architect worked hard for weeks
In venting all his private peaks
Upon the roof, whose crop of leaks
Had satisfied Fluellen;
Whatever anybody had

Out of the common, good or bad,
Knott had it all worked well in,
A donjon-keep, where clothes might
dry,

A porter's lodge that was a sty,
A campanile slim and high,

Too small to hang a bell in;

All up and down and here and there, With Lord-knows-whats of round and

square

Stuck on at random everywhere,
It was a house to make one stare,
All corners and all gables;
Like dogs let loose upon a bear,
Ten emulous styles staboyed with care,
The whole among them seemed to tear,
And all the oddities to spare

Were set upon the stables.

Knott was delighted with a pile
Approved by fashion's leaders:
(Only he made the builder smile,
By asking, every little while,
Why that was called the Twodoor style,
Which certainly had three doors?)
Yet better for this luckless man
If he had put a downright ban

Upon the thing in limine;

For, though to quit affairs his plan,
Ere many days, poor Knott began
Perforce accepting draughts, that ran
All ways except up chimney;
The house, though painted stone to
mock,

With nice white lines round every block
Some trepidation stood in,
When tempests (with petrific shock,
So to speak,) made it really rock,

Though not a whit less wooden; And painted stone, howe'er well done, Will not take in the prodigal sun Whose beams are never quite at one With our terrestrial lumber;

So the wood shrank around the knots,
And gaped in disconcerting spots,
And there were lots of dots and rots
And crannies without number,
Wherethrough, as you may well pre-

sume,

The wind, like water through a flume,
Came rushing in ecstatic,
Leaving, in all three floors, no room
That was not a rheumatic ;

And, what with points and squares and rounds

Grown shaky on their poises, The house at nights was full of pounds, Thumps, bumps, creaks, scratchings, raps-till-"Zounds!"

Cried Knott, "this all goes beyond bounds;

I do not deal in tongues and sounds, Nor have I let my house and grounds To a family of Noyeses!'

But, though Knott's house was full of airs,

He had but one-a daughter; And, as he owned much stocks and shares,

Many who wished to render theirs
Such vain, unsatisfying cares,
And needed wives to sew their tears,

In matrimony sought her;

They vowed her gold they wanted not,
Their faith would never falter,
They longed to tie this single Knott
In the Hymenæal halter;
So daily at the door they rang,

Cards for the belle delivering,
Or in the choir at her they sang,
Achieving such a rapturous twang
As set her nerves ashivering.

Now Knott had quite made up his

mind

That Colonel Jones should have her; No beauty he, but oft we find Sweet kernels 'neath a roughish rind, So hoped his Jenny 'd be resigned And make no more palaver; Glanced at the fact that love was blind, That girls were ratherish inclined To pet their little crosses, Then nosologically defined The rate at which the system pined In those unfortunates who dined Upon that metaphoric kind

Of dish their own proboscis.

But she, with many tears and moans,
Besought him not to mock her,
Said 't was too much for flesh and
bones

To marry mortgages and loans,

That fathers' hearts were stocks and

stones,

And that she'd go, when Mrs. Jones,
To Davy Jones's locker;
Then gave her head a little toss
That said as plain as ever was,
If men are always at a loss

Mere womankind to bridle
To try the thing on woman cross
Were fifty times as idle;
For she a strict resolve had made

And registered in private,
That either she would die a maid,
Or else be Mrs. Doctor Slade,

If woman could contrive it;
And, though the wedding-day was set,
Jenny was more so, rather,
Declaring, in a pretty pet,
That, howsoe'er they spread their net,
She would out-Jennyral them yet,
The colonel and her father.

Just at this time the Public's eyes
Were keenly on the watch, a stir
Beginning slowly to arise
About those questions and replies,
Those raps that unwrapped mysteries
So rapidly at Rochester,
And Knott, already nervous grown
By lying much awake alone,
And listening, sometimes to a moan,
And sometimes to a clatter,
Whene'er the wind at night would rouse
The gingerbread-work on his house,
Or when some hasty-tempered mouse,

Behind the plastering, made a towse
About a family matter,
Began to wonder if his wife,
A paralytic half her life,

Which made it more surprising,
Might not to rule him from her urn,
Have taken a peripatetic turn

For want of exorcising.

This thought, once nestled in his head, Erelong contagious grew, and spread Infecting all his mind with dread, Until at last he lay in bed

And heard his wife, with well-known tread,

Entering the kitchen through the shed, (Or was 't his fancy, mocking?) Opening the pantry, cutting bread, And then (she'd been some ten years dead)

Closets and drawers unlocking; Or, in his room (his breath grew thick) He heard the long-familiar click Of slender needles flying quick, As if she knit a stocking; For whom?- he prayed that years might flit

With pains rheumatic shooting, Before those ghostly things she knit Upon his unfleshed sole might fit, He did not fancy it a bit,

To stand upon that footing; At other times, his frightened hairs Above the bedclothes trusting, He heard her, full of household cares, (No dream entrapped in supper's

snares,

The foal of horrible nightmares,
But broad awake, as he declares,)
Go bustling up and down the stairs,
Or setting back last evening's chairs,
Or with the poker thrusting
The raked-up sea - coal's hardened
And

crust

what! impossible! it must! He knew she had returned to dust, And yet could scarce his senses trust, Hearing her as she poked and fussed About the parlor, dusting!

Night after night he strove to sleep
And take his ease in spite of it;
But still his flesh would chill and creep,
And, though two night-lamps he might
keep,

He could not so make light of it. At last, quite desperate, he goes And tells his neighbors all his woes,

Which did but their amount enhance; They made such mockery of his fears That soon his days were of all jeers,

His nights of the rueful countenance; "I thought most folks," one neighbor said,

"Gave up the ghost when they were dead,"

Another gravely shook his head, Adding, "from all we hear, it's Quite plain poor Knott is going madFor how can he at once be sad

And think he's full of spirits?" A third declared he knew a knife Would cut this Knott much quicker, "The surest way to end all strife, And lay the spirit of a wife,

Is just to take and lick her !" A temperance man caught up the word, "Ah, yes," he groaned, "I've always heard

Our poor friend somewhat slanted Tow'rd taking liquor overmuch; I fear these spirits may be Dutch, (A sort of gins, or something such,) With which his house is haunted; I see the thing as clear as light, If Knott would give up getting tight, Naught farther would be wanted": So all his neighbors stood aloof And, that the spirits 'neath his roof Were not entirely up to proof, Unanimously granted.

Knott knew that cocks and sprites were foes,

And so bought up, Heaven only knows
How many, though he wanted crows
To give ghosts caws, as I suppose,

To think that day was breaking;
Moreover what he called his park,
He turned into a kind of ark
For dogs, because a little bark
Is a good tonic in the dark,

If one is given to waking;
But things went on from bad to worse,
His curs were nothing but a curse,

And, what was still more shocking,
Foul ghosts of living fowl made scoff
And would not think of going off
In spite of all his cocking.