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"Miss Amory has jilted me, and accepted Henry Foker, Esq. I found her warbling ditties to him as he lay at her feet; presents had been accepted, vows exchanged, these ten days. Harry was old Mrs. Planter's rheumatism, which kept dearest Laura out of the house. He is the most constant and generous of men.
Of all his repertory, made up of music-hall ditties, American ragtime, and sweet old half-forgotten ballads, we liked best a certain wild rollicking song, picked up I don't know where, but wonderfully effective on that island where Davis, and Benito Bonito, and many another of the roving gentry not to mention that less picturesque villain, Captain Sampson of the Bonny Lass had resorted between their flings with fortune.
They made me nervous. I was more wretched on the nights they did not come than on the nights they came; for I had begun to listen for them, and was never sure they had gone into another locality before four o'clock in the morning. As for their songs, they were more like music-hall ditties than Christmas carols.
The only humorous songs which my uncles knew were negro ditties, like Camp Town Racetrack and Jordan am a Hard Road to Trabbel but in addition to the sad ballads I have quoted, they joined my mother in The Pirate's Serenade, Erin's Green Shore, Bird of the Wilderness, and the memory of their mellow voices creates a golden dusk between me and that far-off cottage.
From the darkness in one of the corners came a thin, piping voice singing one of the popular trench ditties entitled: "Pack up your Troubles in your Old Kit Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile." Every now and then the singer would stop to Cough, Cough, Cough, but it was a good illustration of Tommy's cheerfulness under such conditions. A machine-gun officer entered the dugout and gave me a hard look.
In Main Street the Jews predominate, the Moors abound; and from the "Jolly Sailor," or the brave "Horse Marine," where the people of our nation are drinking British beer and gin, you hear choruses of "Garryowen" or "The Lass I left behind me;" while through the flaring lattices of the Spanish ventas come the clatter of castanets and the jingle and moan of Spanish guitars and ditties.
It was the natural invitation to song, and all joined in the latest ditties learnt at the music-hall. Away they sped, over the roofs of South London, about them the universal glare of sunlight, the carriage dense with tobacco-smoke. Ho for the bottle of muddy ale, passed round in genial fellowship from mouth to mouth! Pennyloaf would not drink of it; she had a dread of all such bottles.
"Sing what you like! and never mind Varin, my good fellow," said Cadet, stretching himself in his chair; "I like the old Canadian ballads better than all the devil's ditties ever made in Paris! You must sing your devil's ditties yourself, Varin; our habitans won't, that is sure!"
"And yet," said he, "I think my Saxon countrymen had herded long enough with the Normans, to fall into the tone of their melancholy ditties. What took the honest knight from home? or what could he expect but to find his mistress agreeably engaged with a rival on his return, and his serenade, as they call it, as little regarded as the caterwauling of a cat in the gutter?
It is noticeable that Italian ditties are specially designed for fellows shouting in the streets at night. They seem in keeping there, and nowhere else that I could ever see. And these Davosers took to them naturally when the time for Comus came. It was between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the houses in the place were dark.
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