Tom Hood's Comic Readings in Prose and Verse: A Companion to Carpenter's Penny Readings

Front Cover
F. Warne, 1869 - 252 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 134 - Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk By Alloway's auld haunted kirk. Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet To think how mony counsels sweet, How mony lengthen'd sage advices, The husband frae the wife despises ! But to our tale : Ae market night, Tam had got planted unco right, Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, Wi...
Page 134 - O'er a' the ills o' life victorious! But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the...
Page 86 - To learning much inclined, Who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl : " God bless me! — but the Elephant Is very like a wall...
Page 87 - The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an elephant Is very like a fan!" The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is very like a rope!
Page 133 - Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. This truth fand honest Tam o...
Page 151 - All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon, now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker ; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal.
Page 133 - Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise, As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice ! She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum ; That frae November till October, Ae market-day thou was nae sober ; That ilka melder, wi...
Page 145 - ... together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.
Page 138 - In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin! In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin! Kate soon will be a woefu
Page 152 - Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black and towering.

Bibliographic information