The Sausage Maker's Ghost

Somewhere in Leather Lane--
I wonder that it was not Mincing,
And for this reason most convincing,
That Mr. Brain
Dealt in those well-minced cartridges of meat
Some people like to eat--
However, all such quibbles overstepping,
In Leather Lane he lived; and drove a trade
In porcine sausages, though London made,
Call'd "Epping."
Right brisk was the demand,
Seldom his goods stay'd long on hand,
For out of all adjacent courts and lanes,
Young Irish ladies and their swains--
Such soups of girls and broths of boys!--
Sought his delicious chains,
Preferr'd to all polonies, saveloys,
And other foreign toys--
The mere chance passengers
Who saw his "sassengers,"
Of sweetness undeniable,
So sleek, so mottled, and so "friable,"
Stepp'd in, forgetting ev'ry other thought,
And bought.

Meanwhile a constant thumping
Was heard, a sort of subterranean chumping--
Incessant was the noise!
But though he had a foreman and assistant,
With all the tools consistent,
(Besides a wife and two fine chopping boys)
His means were not yet vast enough
For chopping fast enough
To meet the call from streets, and lanes, and passages,
For first-chop "sassages."

However, Mr. Brain
Was none of those dull men and slow,
Who, flying bird-like by a railway train,
Sigh for the heavy mails of long ago;
He did not set his face 'gainst innovations
For rapid operations,
And therefore in a kind of waking dream
Listen'd to some hot-water sprite that hinted
To have his meat chopp'd, as the Times was printed,
By steam!

Accordingly in happy hour,
A bran-new Engine went to work
Chopping up pounds on pounds of pork
With all the energy of Two-Horse-Power,
And wonderful celerity--

When lo! when ev'rything to hope responded,
Whether his head was turn'd by his prosperity,
Whether he had some sly intrigue, in verity,
The man absconded!

His anxious Wife in vain
Placarded Leather Lane,
And all the suburbs with descriptive bills,
Such as are issued when from homes and tills
Clerks, dogs, cats, lunatics, and children roam;
Besides advertisements in all the journals,
Or weeklies or diurnals,
Beginning "LEFT HIS HOME"--
The sausage-maker, spite of white and black,
Never came back.

Never, alive!--But on the seventh night,
Just when the yawning grave its dead releases,
Filling his bedded wife with sore affright
In walk'd his grisly Sprite,
In fifty thousand pieces!
"O Mary!" so it seem'd
In hollow melancholy tone to say,
Whilst thro' its airy shape the moonlight gleam'd
With scarcely dimmer ray--
"O Mary! let your hopes no longer flatter,
Prepare at once to drink of sorrow's cup--
It ain't no use to mince the matter--
The Engine's chopp'd me up!"