My Name is John Wellington Wells
From Gilbert And Sullivan's Operetta, "The Sorcerer" (1877)
My name is John Wellington Wells. I'm a dealer in magic and
spells, in blessings and curses and ever-filled purses, in prophecies,
witches and knells. If you want a proud foe to make tracks, if you'd
melt a rich uncle in wax, you've but to look in on the resident djinn,
number seventy simmery axe.
We've a
first-rate assortment of magic and for raising a posthumous shade. With
effects that are comic or tragic, there's no cheaper house in the
trade. Love-philtre, we've quantities of it and for knowledge if anyone
burns, we're keeping a very small profit who brings us unbounded
returns. For he can prophesy with a wink of his eye, peep with security
into futurity, sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, humour
proclivity for a nativity.
He has
answers oracular, bogies spectacular, tetrapods tragical, mirrors so
magical, facts astronomical, solemn or comical. And if you want it, he
makes a reduction on taking a quantity. Oooooooh!!! And if anyone
anything lacks, he'll find it already in stacks, if he'll only look in
on the resident djinn, number seventy simmery axe!
He can raise
you hosts of ghosts and that without reflectors, and creepy things with
wings and gaunt and grisly spectres. He can fill you crowds of shrouds
and horrify you vastly. He can rack your brains with chains, with
gibberings grim and ghastly!
Then if you
plan it, he changes organity, with an urbanity, full of satanity, vexes
humanity with an inanity, fatal to vanity, driving your foes to the
verge of insanity. Barring tautology in demonology, lectro-biology,
mystic nosology, spirit philology, high-class astrology. Such is his
knowledge, he isn't the man to require an apology. Oooooooh!!!
My name is
John Wellington Wells. I'm a dealer in magic and spells, in blessings
and curses, and ever-filled purses, in prophecies, witches and knells.
And if anyone anything lacks, he'll find it already in stacks. If he'll
only look in on the resident djinn, number seventy simmery axe!
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