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The Green Bag.
His images did indicate
The Church supported by the rate,
Imposed by broker of the State.
We may be sure the prisoner's head was level,
For he had naught to say about the Devil.
But old Judge Park, unmoved by this display
Of wit and tact, merely vouchsafed to say :
I think, as do my learned brothers,
One nuisance does not sanction others;
Lord Mayor's Day is once a year,
And not three months, like this one here;
The crowds which king and judges throng
Do not stand still, but move along;
And Bartly Fair, we are afraid,
Is more and more a nuisance made.
(Perhaps his Honor was not then aware
That this so much derided Bartly Fair
Had been attended by the wise John Locke,
And Lady Russell, who at prisoner's dock
Took notes for her indicted husband when
Counsel was not allowed to such poor men.)
The jury to convict were not unwilling.
The prisoner was mulcted forty shilling,
And had to take his naughty figures down;
So quiet reigned in that part of the town.
The Church supported by the rate,
Imposed by broker of the State.
We may be sure the prisoner's head was level,
For he had naught to say about the Devil.
But old Judge Park, unmoved by this display
Of wit and tact, merely vouchsafed to say :
I think, as do my learned brothers,
One nuisance does not sanction others;
Lord Mayor's Day is once a year,
And not three months, like this one here;
The crowds which king and judges throng
Do not stand still, but move along;
And Bartly Fair, we are afraid,
Is more and more a nuisance made.
(Perhaps his Honor was not then aware
That this so much derided Bartly Fair
Had been attended by the wise John Locke,
And Lady Russell, who at prisoner's dock
Took notes for her indicted husband when
Counsel was not allowed to such poor men.)
The jury to convict were not unwilling.
The prisoner was mulcted forty shilling,
And had to take his naughty figures down;
So quiet reigned in that part of the town.
Of cases similar the number few is, —
In Q. B. Div., Regina versus Lewis,
Where in shop-window comic photograph
Of statesmen and of bishops raised a laugh;
And in this country, Fairbanks versus Kerr,[1]
Where a street preacher made a lively stir,
And gathered quite a crowd upon the walk,
Who broke the flags in strife to hear him talk;
Then there 's the case of Jacques the melancholy,[2]
Who prayed injunction 'gainst the puppet folly
Of dancing soldier, skeleton and clown,
Because it drew the curious of the town
To crowd the street where Wisdom vainly cries,
And yields the way to things of smaller price.
In Q. B. Div., Regina versus Lewis,
Where in shop-window comic photograph
Of statesmen and of bishops raised a laugh;
And in this country, Fairbanks versus Kerr,[1]
Where a street preacher made a lively stir,
And gathered quite a crowd upon the walk,
Who broke the flags in strife to hear him talk;
Then there 's the case of Jacques the melancholy,[2]
Who prayed injunction 'gainst the puppet folly
Of dancing soldier, skeleton and clown,
Because it drew the curious of the town
To crowd the street where Wisdom vainly cries,
And yields the way to things of smaller price.
