Editing .NDg.NjgzMQ

and Thou goest forth to Thy Purification at the hands of the local Steam Laundry!
Nor are Mrs. Todgers's boarders alone in this matter. The gentle Longfellow too raises in our bosoms at each perusal of his poignant words a chaos of emotions.  Consider awhile!  The poet, with hair dishevelled, the fires of ecstasy exhausted by the composition of "Excelsior", has kept dinner waiting.  Haggard with expectancy, he raises the cover ....... shudders shake his frame ........he gazes upon the Roast ...... upon Thee, no longer brown with the oven's heat, but swimming white with clammy fat.  His eyes roll, he foams ........ ah, the poetic frenzy is upon him.  Summoning the housekeeper, in a ringing voice he declaims the grand, rolling lines ..... "The Gravy's cold ..... (§)
What depths, what heights, are here attained!  In this poem Longfellow has raised to Thee, oh Gravy, a shrine of words, a lasting Memorial, which shall not be forgotten.
'Tis clear to the nice observer that Thou wast Shelley's inspiration, when he wrote.....
"Hail to thee, blithe spirit,
Bird thou never wert."
Of a truth, Gravy, Thou Art a spirit, an Elemental, the Essential Essence, as it were, of grass-fed South-Downs, rich attar of stately Herefords. "Bird thou never wert." How simple, yet how powerful in the knowledge of the irresistible and the incontrovertible!
And of Thy rivals, of Thy - and yet not Thine - so-called "Thickeners" I would say .....
Behold, ye who pass by, the Writing on the Wall, or flaunting on the lofty molding...
[sp] Liebig,  Hugon and Company."
Be wary; poke a pig before purchasing, lest, when ye weigh him in the balance he be found wanting.  Take not unto yourself Armour, nor anything from his works, for, like David of old, ye have not proved it.  Well has it been written: "Stick thou to the Gravy, and the Gravy will stick to thee."
Nay, nay, old Gravy, staunch friend, whom, soaked up in bread, and administered on a fork, as a child I learned to know; Thou and I part not company.  When the time shall arrive, and I become a "lean and slippered pantaloon... sans teeth, sans hair, sans taste," yet shall I not be "sans everything". My toothless gums shall once again receive the crustless manchet steeped in Thee, and my lips, as they mumble, shall yet find utterance enough to cry aloud:
"Hail, Good Gravy, the Rich, the Brown, the Royal, the King of the Roast." F.C.R.
(§) I am aware that some editions read " Grave is...."