Mrs. Merdle Discourseth Of The Necessity Of Good Wine And Other Matters.

A poem by Horatio Alger, Jr.

So while we are eating the fruits of the vine,
Don't let us forget such a health giving juice,
As Champagne, or Sherbet, or other good wine,
Nor sin by neglecting its 'temperate use.'

Now Sherbet, my husband extols to the skies,
With me though, my stomach is weak and won't bear it:
And Sherry, though sometimes affecting my eyes,
A bottle with pleasure we'll open and share it.

Ha, ha, well-a-day--what a queer world to live in,
If one were contented on little to dine,
We need not be longing another to be in,
Where women, they tell us, exist without wine;
Where husbands are happy and women content;
Where dresses, though gauzy, are fit for the street;
Where no one is wretched with purses unbent,
With nothing to wear and nothing to eat.

Where women no longer are treated la Turk,
Where husbands descended from Saxon or Norman,
For women when sickly are willing to work,
And not long for Utah and pleasures la Mormon--
Where men freely marry and live with their wives,
And not live as you do, mon Colonel, so single.

Such wretched and dinnerless bachelor lives;
You don't know the pleasure there is in the tingle
Of ears pricked by lectures, la curtain, au Caudle,
Or noise of young Dinewells beginning to toddle;
While plodding all day with your paper and quills,
And copy, and proof sheets, and work for the printer,
Pray what do you know of the housekeeper's bills,
And other such 'pleasures of hope' for the winter?

You men, selfish creatures, think all of the care
Of living and keeping yourselves in existence,
Is due to your own daily labor, and share,
From breakfast to dinner of business persistance;
While woman is either a plaything or drudge,
According to station of wealth or position,
Which men help along with a word or a nudge
To heaven high up or low down to perdition.

But what was I saying of a world free from care,
Of eating and drinking and dresses to wear?

Where women by husbands are never tormented,
And never asked money where husbands dissented?
And never see others, their rivals, in fashion ahead,
And never have doctors--a woman's great dread--
And nothing, I hope, like my own indigestion,
To torment and starve them, as this one does me,
And keep them from sipping--forgive the suggestion--
The nectar etherial they drink for their tea.