"From a saurian interior, Christian friends, I now address you"--
(And "Oh heaven!" or its correlative, groaned shuddering we)--
"While there yet remains a scrap of my identity, for, bless you,
This ungodly alligator's fast assimilating me.
"For although through nine abysmal days I've fought with his
digestion,
Being hostile to his processes and loth to pulpify,
It is rapidly becoming a most complicated question
How much of me is crocodile, how much of him is I.
"And, Oh, my friends, 'tis sorrow's crown of sorrow to remember
That this sacrilegious reptile owed me nought but gratitude,
For I bought him from a showman twenty years since come November,
And I dropped him in the river for his own and others' good.
"It had grieved me that the spouses of our townsmen, and their
daughters,
Should be shocked by river bathers and their indecorous ways,
So I cast my bread, that is, my alligator, on the waters,
And I found it, in a credit balance, after many days.
"Years I waited, but at last there came the rumour long-expected,
And the out-of-door ablutionists forsook their wicked paths,
And the issues of my handiwork divinely were directed
In a constant flow of custom to the Corporation Baths.
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