"He labors more than you

At worsted work, and frames it; In old maids' albums, too,

Sticks seaweed - yes, and names it!"

The tempter said his say,

Which pierced him like a needleHe summoned straight away

His sexton and his beadle.

(These men were men who could Hold liberal opinions :

On Sundays they were good

On week-days they were minions.)

"To HOPLEY PORTER go

Your fare I will afford you

Deal him a deadly blow

And blessings shall reward you.

"But stay

I do not like

Undue assassination,

And so before you strike,

Make this communication:

"I'll give him this one chance
If he'll more gaily bear him,
Play croquet, smoke, and dance,
I willingly will spare him."

They went, those minions true,
To Assesmilk-cum-Worter,

And told their errand to

The REVEREND HOPLEY PORter.

"What?" said that reverend gent, "Dance through my hours of leisure ? Smoke?- bathe myself with scent?

Play croquet? Oh, with pleasure!

"Wear all my hair in curl?

Stand at my door and wink SO:At every passing girl?

My brothers, I should think so!

"For years I've longed for some
Excuse for this revulsion:

Now that excuse has come
I do it on compulsion! ! !

The deuce there was to pay
At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.

And HOOPER holds his ground,
In mildness daily growing-
They think him, all around,
The mildest curate going.

ONLY A DANCING GIRL

NLY a dancing girl,

ON

With an unromantic style,
With borrowed color and curl,
With fixed mechanical smile,
With many a hackneyed wile,
With ungrammatical lips,
And corns that mar her trips!

Hung from the "flies" in air,
She acts a palpable lie,

She 's as little a fairy there
As unpoetical I!

I hear you asking, Why-
Why in the world I sing
This tawdry, tinselled thing?

No airy fairy she,

As she hangs in arsenic green, From a highly impossible tree,

In a highly impossible scene (Herself not over clean). For fays don't suffer, I'm told, From bunions, coughs, or cold.

And stately dames that bring
Their daughters there to see,
Pronounce the "dancing thing"

No better than she should be.
With her skirt at her shameful knee,
And her painted, tainted phiz :

Ah, matron, which of us is?

(And, in sooth, it oft occurs

That while these matrons sigh,
Their dresses are lower than hers,
And sometimes half as high;
And their hair is hair they buy,
And they use their glasses, too,
In a way she'd blush to do.)

But change her gold and green
For a coarse merino gown,

And see her upon the scene

Of her home, when coaxing down
Her drunken father's frown,

In his squalid cheerless den:

She's a fairy truly, then!

GENERAL JOHN

HE bravest names for fire and flames,
And all that mortal durst,

ΤΗ

Were GENERAL JOHN and PRIVATE JAMES,

Of the Sixty-seventy-first.

A sneer would play on his martial phiz,
Superior birth to show ;

"Pish!" was a favorite word of his,
And he often said "Ho! ho!"

FULL-PRIVATE JAMES described might be
As a man of a mournful mind;

No characteristic trait had he