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If Merdle had told me a friend would be here,
A dinner I'd get up in spite of the bills--
I often tell butcher he's wonderful dear--
He says every calf that a butcher now kills,
Will cost near as much as the price of a steer,
Before all the banks in their discount expanded
And flooded the country with 'lamp-black and rags,'
Which poor men has ruined and shipwrecked and stranded
On Poverty's billows and quick-sands and crags.
And that is just what, as our butcher explains,
The dickens has played with our beef and our mutton;
But something is gained, for, with all of his pains,
The poor man won't make of himself such a glutton.
I'm sure if they knew what a sin 't is to eat,
When things are all selling at extravagant prices,
That poor folks more saving would be of their meat,
And learn by example how little suffices.
I wish they could see for themselves what a table--
What examples we set to the laboring poor,
In prudence, and saving, in those who are able
To live like a king and his court on a tour.
I feel, I acknowledge, sometimes quite dejected
To think, as it happens with you here today,
To drop in so sudden and quite unexpected,
How poor we are living some people will say.
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