Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Thackerayand honor, that mothers will not be found to offer theiryoung girls to supply the lamented lady’s place? Howstale this misanthropy is! Something must have disagreedwith this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare sayyou would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow;ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad,and shaking in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grinof sham gayety to conceal thy terror, lest I should pointthee out:—thou art prosperous and honored, art thou?I say thou hast been a tyrant and a robber. Thou hastplundered the poor. Thou hast bullied the weak. Thouhast laid violent hands on the goods of the innocentand confiding. Thou hast made a prey of the meek andgentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast beenhard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, monster!Ah, when shall little Jack come and drill daylightthrough thy wicked cannibal carcass? I see the ogrepass on, bowing right and left to the company; and hegives a dreadful sidelong glance of suspicion as he istalking to my lord bishop in the corner there.Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In formertimes, and in children’s books, where it is necessary topaint your moral in such large letters that there can beno mistake about it, ogres are made with that enormousmouth and ratelier which you know of, and withwhich they can swallow down a baby, almost withoutusing that great knife which they always carry. Theyare too cunning now-a-days. They go about in society,slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no especiallygreat appetite. In my own young days there used to beplay ogres—men who would devour a young fellow inone sitting, and leave him without a bit of flesh on hisbones. They were quiet gentlemanlike-looking people.They got the young fellow into their cave. Champagne,pate-de-foie-gras, and numberless good things, werehanded about; and then, having eaten, the young manwas devoured in his turn. I believe these card and diceogres have died away almost as entirely as the hastypuddinggiants whom Tom Thumb overcame. Now, thereare ogres in City courts who lure you into their dens.About our Cornish mines I am told there are many mostplausible ogres, who tempt you into their caverns and139