about Midnight
There might you read in verses , pathetic and unadorned , how -- `` Sally loved a sailor lad As fought with famous Shovel ! '' There might you learn , if of two facts so instructive you were before unconscious , that -- `` Ben the toper loved his bottle , -- Charley only loved the lasses ! '' When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat wearied , the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal edification and delight . There might you fully enlighten yourself as to the `` Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington , being a most full and true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by an Evil Spirit on Wednesday , 15th of April last , about Midnight . '' There , too , no less interesting and no less veracious , was that uncommon anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled `` The Divell of Mascon ; or , the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean Spirit did and said at Mascon , in Burgundy , in the house of one Mr. Francis Pereaud : now made English by one that hath a Particular Knowledge of the Truth of the Story . '' Nor were these materials for Satanic history the only prosaic and faithful chronicles which the bibliothecal blanket afforded . Equally wonderful , and equally indisputable , was the account of `` a young lady , the daughter of a duke , with three legs and the face of a porcupine . ''