A GENTLEMAN of City fame Now claims your kind attention;East India broking was his game,His name I shall not mention:
No one of finelypointed sense Would violate a confidence,And shall I go And do it?No!
His name I shall not mention.
He had a trusty wife and true,And very cosy quarters,A manager,a boy or two,Six clerks,and seven porters.
A broker must be doing well (As any lunatic can tell)Who can employ An active boy,Six clerks,and seven porters.
His knocker advertised no dun,No losses made him sulky,He had one sorrow only one He was extremely bulky.
A man must be,I beg to state,Exceptionally fortunate Who owns his chief And only grief Is being very bulky.
"This load,"he'd say,"I cannot bear;I'm nineteen stone or twenty!
Henceforward I'll go in for air And exercise in plenty."
Most people think that,should it come,They can reduce a bulging tum To measures fair By taking air And exercise in plenty.
In every weather,every day,Dry,muddy,wet,or gritty,He took to dancing all the way From Brompton to the City.
You do not often get the chance Of seeing sugar brokers dance From their abode In Fulham Road Through Brompton to the City.
He braved the gay and guileless laugh Of children with their nusses,The loud uneducated chaff Of clerks on omnibuses.
Against all minor things that rack A nicelybalanced mind,I'll back The noisy chaff And illbred laugh Of clerks on omnibuses.
His friends,who heard his money chink,And saw the house he rented,And knew his wife,could never think What made him discontented.
It never entered their pure minds That fads are of eccentric kinds,Nor would they own That fat alone Could make one discontented.