King Grover at his table round
Sate feasting once, and there was sound
Of good things said and sly;
When, presently, King Grover spake:
“A murrain seize this futile cake!
Come, Daniel, pass the pie!”
Then quoth Sir Daniel, flaming hot,
“Pie hath not been in Camelot
Since Arthur was our king;
Soothly, I ween, ’twere vain to make
Demand for pie where there is cake,
For pie’s a ribald thing!”
“Despite King Arthur’s rash decree,
Which ill-beseemeth mine and me,”
King Grover answered flat,
“I will have pie three times a day,—
Let dotards cavil as they may,—
And _pumpkin_-pie, at that!”
Then, frowning a prodigious frown,
Sir Daniel pulled his visor down,
And, with a mighty sigh,
Out strode he to the kitchen, where
He bade the varlet slaves prepare
Three times each day a pie.
Thenceforth King Grover was content,
And all his reign in peace was spent;
And when ’twas questioned why
He waxed so hale, and why the while,
The whole domain was free from guile,
He simply answered, “Pie!”
_Life, Death, and Love._
A man whose greatness had brought him fame and wealth lay on his
death-bed. A woman clasped his hands, and with her kisses, and words of
love, strove to soothe his dying agonies.
Many years ago this man and this woman were made husband and wife, and
side by side they started upon life’s journey. Youth, love, and hope
gave them strength. No other possessions had they, yet the future was
full of promise.
The man gloried in his majestic manliness. Health made him a marvel of
noble beauty. His frame was of iron, his muscles were of steel, and his
brain was clean and vigorous as the sturdy heart that throbbed in his
rugged breast. Success—which is another term for wealth and fame—came to
him as certainly as it always does to the brave and strong. Who was
there that did not admire the manliness of his art?
But in the years that followed this success, the man neglected the
woman, his wife. Dazzled by the glory of his triumphs, his eyes were
blind to the beauty, the loyalty, and the sweetness of her love. Perhaps
he thought the woman whom the sturdy, unknown youth had taken to his
heart was unworthy to share the fruits of the great and honored man’s
conquests. But he put her away: in all charity let it be said the wrong
came not from an evil heart, but from the false glitter by which an
unparalleled prosperity blinded his eyes, and turned his head.
To this wrong succeeded a greater. Women who knew not the sweetness and
sacredness of purity, openly and wantonly gloried in his unholy homage.
And into this popular idol’s life, there crept a shame that meant
inevitable and irretrievable ruin.
Who counted the tears, who heard the agonized prayers, of the
heart-broken wife in all the years of this proud, strong man’s
exaltation? That divine, almighty Power that has written in every human
bosom this eternal truth,—that he who puts a stain upon his hearthstone,
and violates a wifely love, shall pay a sure and dreadful penalty.
So it came to pass that at the very height of his glory, and in the full
possession of his powers, an awful retribution came upon the great,
strong man. The shame of his splendid life had planted its poisons thick
and deep, and the ruin was complete. A cloud fell upon the strong man’s
reason, and his majestic frame crumbled and withered with disease.
Where, then, were his flatterers, and where the comely sirens that with
their false charms had allured him from his hearthstone? At the first
warning of impending ruin they disappeared, like sunbeams before the
advance of a thunder-cloud. Where was his fame now? where his greatness,
the world’s homage, the power of riches? All gone, all dissipated, or,
at least, as futile against the hand of divine retribution as the winds
that play around the tops of the everlasting hills.
From a living dream whose horrors we may never know, the shattered,
enfeebled man awakened one day. The cloud was lifted from his brain;
and, ere he went to his last judgment, his eyes looked once more for a
short moment upon the woman he had so grievously wronged. _She_, woman
that she was! came with forgiveness on her lips, and love in her broken
heart, to minister to him in his last moments; to bear him back to the
hearthstone he had abandoned. He felt her arms about his neck, and the
death-damp on his brow was warmed by her caresses.
_Then_, at last, we may suppose, this mighty wreck—this shattered fabric
of human idolatry—saw and felt the incomparable sweetness and grandeur
of wifely love. At least, we are told he stretched out his hands to her
as though he pleaded for forgiveness. His lips moved; but from them
there came no sound, as if inexorable retribution decreed he should not
tell that gentle, noble wife how sweetly her love soothed him. But we
are told his eyes were fixed steadily upon hers, and we know—yes, we
know it well—they spoke tenderly and reverently to her, and pleaded, oh,
so earnestly! for her love and compassion. We know, too, that all the
love and compassion the dying great man craved was given freely—ay, even
before his trembling hands and pleading eyes reached out for it.
Such is thy charity, O godlike womanhood! and in its sweetness and
tenderness and purity, God grant we all may live and die!
_Pike’s Peak._
I stood upon the peak amid the air:
Below me lay the peopled, busy earth;
Life, life, and life again was everywhere,
And everywhere were melody and mirth—
Save on that peak, and silence brooded there.
I vaunted then myself, and half aloud
I gloried in the journey I had done:
“Eschewing earth, and earth’s seductive crowd,
I’ve scaled this steep, despite the rocks and sun;
Of such a feat might any man be proud!”
But, as I boasted thus, my burro brayed;
I turned, and lo! a tear was in his eye;
And as I gazed, methought the burro sayed,
“Prithee, who brought you up this mountain high?
Was it _your_ legs or _mine_ the journey made?”
Then moraled I: “The sturdiest peak is fame’s,
And there be many on its very height,
Who strut in pride, and vaunt their empty claims,
While those poor human asses who delight
To place them there have unremembered names!”
_Christian-County Mosquitoes._
Dr. Cyrus Thomas, formerly of Carbondale, but now connected with the
national entomological department at Washington, is temporarily in
Illinois, investigating the habits of the mosquitoes that infest that
magnificent Christian-county waterway, Flat Branch. By a judicious
system of bear-traps exposed along the banks of Flat Branch, Dr. Thomas
has possessed himself of a number of handsome specimens of
Christian-county mosquitoes, and he is enabled therefore to pursue his
researches with uncommon accuracy and ease. His investigations have not
progressed to that extent, however, that he is able to declare
positively that the Christian-county mosquito is an insect, and not a
bird: in fact, there are numerous reasons for believing that these
curious and ravenous creatures are a species of reptile, provided, by an
inscrutable dispensation of nature, with wings. But his researches have
developed many interesting and hitherto unknown facts about these
remarkable and remorseless nondescripts. In the first place, the
Flat-Branch mosquitoes are carnivorous mammals: they nurse their young,
and they are provided with incisor and molar teeth for the tearing and
masticating of flesh. There is something almost human in the way they
wear their beards and mustaches, yet they resemble the equine species in
the particular of the spiked shoes with which they are invariably shod
when they arrive at maturity, viz., the twenty-first year. In the matter
of rearing their young, their habits seem to be like those of the
ordinary prairie-chicken, for they retire in the early spring to quiet
burrows or corn-fields along Flat Branch, and raise their broods, which
have been known to number six hundred souls to one family; in July they
become gregarious, and congregate in the timber, roosting in the high
trees, and laying waste the human population of the surrounding country.
Christian-county huntsmen—notably the Taylorville Sportsman’s
Association—employ different methods of capturing these destructive
creatures. One way is by means of quail-nets: another is the old way of
hunting them with pointer-dogs and gun, in the latter case, buckshot is
used, and the heaviest kind of fowling-piece is preferred. But the most
popular method of capture is the pitfall,—the same employed to entrap
elephants in India. A deep pit is dug, a light covering is thrown over
the opening, and on this covering is placed a hindquarter of beef.
Attracted thither by the fumes of the meat, the mosquito unsuspectingly
steps upon the deceitful pitfall, the slight fabric yields under the
leviathan’s weight, and with a sickening groan the winged monster is
precipitated into his gloomy prison, from which he is not hoisted by his
captors till he is enfeebled by captivity and starvation. In this way
thousands of mosquitoes are taken annually by the people of Christian
County, who derive a handsome profit from the pelts of the mosquitoes,
which are tanned into shoe-leather, and the tusks, which are utilized
for those varied purposes to which ivory is usually put. Considering the
importance of this industry, it is not strange that the result of Dr.
Thomas’s explorations and researches are awaited with a solicitude
bordering upon suspense.
_The Dying Soldier._
His listening soul hears no echo of battle,
No pæan of triumph, nor welcome of fame;
But down through the years comes a little one’s prattle,
And softly he murmurs her idolized name;
And it seems as if now at his heart she were clinging,
As she clung in those dear, distant years to his knee;
He sees her fair face, and he hears her sweet singing—
And Nellie is coming from over the sea.
While each patriot’s hope stays the fulness of sorrow,
While our eyes are bedimmed, and our voices are low,
He dreams of the daughter who comes with the morrow,
Like an angel come back from the dear long ago.
Ah! what to him now is a nation’s emotion?
And what for our love or our grief careth he?
A swift-speeding ship is a-sail on the ocean,
And Nellie is coming from over the sea!