No others were about) a soul advanced--
A fat, orbicular and jolly soul
With laughter-lines upon each rosy jowl--
A monk so prepossessing that the saint
Admired him, breathless, until weak and faint,
Forgot his frown and all his questions too,
Forgoing even the customary "Who?"--
Threw wide the gate and, with a friendly grin,
Said, "'Tis a very humble home, but pray walk in."
The soul smiled pleasantly. "Excuse me, please--
Who's in there?" By insensible degrees
The impudence dispelled the saint's esteem,
As growing snores annihilate a dream.
The frown began to blacken on his brow,
His hand to reach for "Whence?" and "Why?" and "How?"
"O, no offense, I hope," the soul explained;
"I'm rather--well, particular. I've strained
A point in coming here at all; 'tis said
That Susan Anthony (I hear she's dead
At last) and all her followers are here.
As company, they'd be--confess it--rather queer."
The saint replied, his rising anger past:
"What can I do?--the law is hard-and-fast,
Albeit unwritten and on earth unknown--
An oral order issued from the Throne.
By but one sin has Woman e'er incurred
God's wrath. To accuse Them Loud of that would be absurd."
That friar sighed, but, calling up a smile,
Said, slowly turning on his heel the while:
"Farewell, my friend. Put up the chain and bar--
I'm going, so please you, where the pretty women are."
1895.
THE OPPOSING SEX.
The Widows of Ashur
Are loud in their wailing:
"No longer the 'masher'
Sees Widows of Ashur!"
So each is a lasher
Of Man's smallest failing.
The Widows of Ashur
Are loud in their wailing.
The Cave of Adullam,
That home of reviling--
No wooing can gull 'em
In Cave of Adullam.
No angel can lull 'em
To cease their defiling
The Cave of Adullam,
That home of reviling.
At men they are cursing--
The Widows of Ashur;
Themselves, too, for nursing
The men they are cursing.
The praise they're rehearsing
Of every slasher
At men. _They_ are cursing
The Widows of Ashur.
A WHIPPER-IN.
[Commissioner of Pensions Dudley has established a Sunday-school and
declares he will remove any clerk in his department who does not
regularly attend.--_N.Y. World.]_
Dudley, great placeman, man of mark and note,
Worthy of honor from a feeble pen
Blunted in service of all true, good men,
You serve the Lord--in courses, _table d'hôte:
Au, naturel,_ as well as _à la Nick_--
"Eat and be thankful, though it make you sick."
O, truly pious caterer, forbear
To push the Saviour and Him crucified
_(Brochette_ you'd call it) into their inside
Who're all unused to such ambrosial fare.
The stomach of the soul makes quick revulsion
Of aught that it has taken on compulsion.
I search the Scriptures, but I do not find
That e'er the Spirit beats with angry wings
For entrance to the heart, but sits and sings
To charm away the scruples of the mind.
It says: "Receive me, please; I'll not compel"--
Though if you don't you will go straight to Hell!
Well, that's compulsion, you will say. 'T is true:
We cower timidly beneath the rod
Lifted in menace by an angry God,
But won't endure it from an ape like you.
Detested simian with thumb prehensile,
Switch _me_ and I would brain you with my pencil!
Face you the Throne, nor dare to turn your back
On its transplendency to flog some wight
Who gropes and stumbles in the infernal night
Your ugly shadow lays along his track.
O, Thou who from the Temple scourged the sin,
Behold what rascals try to scourge it in!
JUDGMENT.
I drew aside the Future's veil
And saw upon his bier
The poet Whitman. Loud the wail
And damp the falling tear.
"He's dead--he is no more!" one cried,
With sobs of sorrow crammed;
"No more? He's this much more," replied
Another: "he is damned!"
1885.
THE FALL OF MISS LARKIN.
Hear me sing of Sally Larkin who, I'd have you understand,
Played accordions as well as any lady in the land;
And I've often heard it stated that her fingering was such
That Professor Schweinenhauer was enchanted with her touch;
And that beasts were so affected when her apparatus rang
That they dropped upon their haunches and deliriously sang.
This I know from testimony, though a critic, I opine,
Needs an ear that is dissimilar in some respects to mine.
She could sing, too, like a jaybird, and they say all eyes were wet
When Sally and the ranch-dog were performing a duet--
Which I take it is a song that has to be so loudly sung
As to overtax the strength of any single human lung.
That, at least, would seem to follow from the tale I have to tell,
Which (I've told you how she flourished) is how Sally Larkin fell.
One day there came to visit Sally's dad as sleek and smart
A chap as ever wandered there from any foreign part.
Though his gentle birth and breeding he did not at all obtrude
It was somehow whispered round he was a simon-pure Dude.
Howsoe'er that may have been, it was conspicuous to see
That he _was_ a real Gent of an uncommon high degree.
That Sally cast her tender and affectionate regards
On this exquisite creation was, of course, upon the cards;
But he didn't seem to notice, and was variously blind
To her many charms of person and the merits of her mind,
And preferred, I grieve to say it, to play poker with her dad,
And acted in a manner that in general was bad.
One evening--'twas in summer--she was holding in her lap
Her accordion, and near her stood that melancholy chap,
Leaning up against a pillar with his lip in grog imbrued,
Thinking, maybe, of that ancient land in which he was a Dude.
Then Sally, who was melancholy too, began to hum
And elongate the accordion with a preluding thumb.
Then sighs of amorosity from Sally L. exhaled,
And her music apparatus sympathetically wailed.
"In the gloaming, O my darling!" rose that wild impassioned strain,
And her eyes were fixed on his with an intensity of pain,
Till the ranch-dog from his kennel at the postern gate came round,
And going into session strove to magnify the sound.
He lifted up his spirit till the gloaming rang and rang
With the song that to _his_ darling he impetuously sang!
Then that musing youth, recalling all his soul from other scenes,
Where his fathers all were Dudes and his mothers all Dudines,
From his lips removed the beaker and politely, o'er the grog,
Said: "Miss Larkin, please be quiet: you will interrupt the dog."
IN HIGH LIFE.
Sir Impycu Lackland, from over the sea,
Has led to the altar Miss Bloatie Bondee.
The wedding took place at the Church of St. Blare;
The fashion, the rank and the wealth were all there--
No person was absent of all whom one meets.
Lord Mammon himself bowed them into their seats,
While good Sir John Satan attended the door
And Sexton Beelzebub managed the floor,
Respectfully keeping each dog to its rug,
Preserving the peace between poodle and pug.
Twelve bridesmaids escorted the bride up the aisle
To blush in her blush and to smile in her smile;
Twelve groomsmen supported the eminent groom
To scowl in his scowl and to gloom in his gloom.
The rites were performed by the hand and the lip
Of his Grace the Diocesan, Billingham Pip,
Assisted by three able-bodied divines.
He prayed and they grunted, he read, they made signs.
Such fashion, such beauty, such dressing, such grace
Were ne'er before seen in that heavenly place!
That night, full of gin, and all blazing inside,
Sir Impycu blackened the eyes of his bride.
A BUBBLE.
Mrs. Mehitable Marcia Moore
Was a dame of superior mind,
With a gown which, modestly fitting before,
Was greatly puffed up behind.
The bustle she wore was ingeniously planned
With an inspiration bright:
It magnified seven diameters and
Was remarkably nice and light.
It was made of rubber and edged with lace
And riveted all with brass,
And the whole immense interior space
Inflated with hydrogen gas.
The ladies all said when she hove in view
Like the round and rising moon:
"She's a stuck up thing!" which was partly true,
And men called her the Captive Balloon.
To Manhattan Beach for a bath one day
She went and she said: "O dear!
If I leave off _this_ what will people say?
I shall look so uncommonly queer!"
So a costume she had accordingly made
To take it all nicely in,
And when she appeared in that suit arrayed,
She was greeted with many a grin.
Proudly and happily looking around,
She waded out into the wet,
But the water was very, very profound,
And her feet and her forehead met!
As her bubble drifted away from the shore,
On the glassy billows borne,
All cried: "Why, where is Mehitable Moore?
I saw her go in, I'll be sworn!"
Then the bulb it swelled as the sun grew hot,
Till it burst with a sullen roar,
And the sea like oil closed over the spot--
Farewell, O Mehitable Moore!
A RENDEZVOUS.
Nightly I put up this humble petition:
"Forgive me, O Father of Glories,
My sins of commission, my sins of omission,
My sins of the Mission Dolores."
FRANCINE.
Did I believe the angels soon would call
You, my beloved, to the other shore,
And I should never see you any more,
I love you so I know that I should fall
Into dejection utterly, and all
Love's pretty pageantry, wherein we bore
Twin banners bravely in the tumult's fore,
Would seem as shadows idling on a wall.
So daintily I love you that my love
Endures no rumor of the winter's breath,
And only blossoms for it thinks the sky
Forever gracious, and the stars above
Forever friendly. Even the fear of death
Were frost wherein its roses all would die.
AN EXAMPLE.
They were two deaf mutes, and they loved and they
Resolved to be groom and bride;
And they listened to nothing that any could say,
Nor ever a word replied.
From wedlock when warned by the married men,
Maintain an invincible mind:
Be deaf and dumb until wedded--and then
Be deaf and dumb and blind.
REVENGE.
A spitcat sate on a garden gate
And a snapdog fared beneath;
Careless and free was his mien, and he
Held a fiddle-string in his teeth.
She marked his march, she wrought an arch
Of her back and blew up her tail;
And her eyes were green as ever were seen,
And she uttered a woful wail.
The spitcat's plaint was as follows: "It ain't
That I am to music a foe;
For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside,
And I twang them soft and low.
"But that dog has trifled with art and rifled
A kitten of mine, ah me!
That catgut slim was marauded from him:
'Tis the string that men call E."
Then she sounded high, in the key of Y,
A note that cracked the tombs;
And the missiles through the firmament flew
From adjacent sleeping-rooms.
As her gruesome yell from the gate-post fell
She followed it down to earth;
And that snapdog wears a placard that bears
The inscription: "Blind from birth."
THE GENESIS OF EMBARRASSMENT.
When Adam first saw Eve he said:
"O lovely creature, share my bed."
Before consenting, she her gaze
Fixed on the greensward to appraise,
As well as vision could avouch,
The value of the proffered couch.
And seeing that the grass was green
And neatly clipped with a machine--
Observing that the flow'rs were rare
Varieties, and some were fair,
The posts of precious woods, besprent
With fragrant balsams, diffluent,
And all things suited to her worth,
She raised her angel eyes from earth
To his and, blushing to confess,
Murmured: "I love you, Adam--yes."
Since then her daughters, it is said,
Look always down when asked to wed.
IN CONTUMACIAM.
Och! Father McGlynn,
Ye appear to be in
Fer a bit of a bout wid the Pope;
An' there's divil a doubt
But he's knockin' ye out
While ye're hangin' onto the rope.
An' soon ye'll lave home
To thravel to Rome,
For its bound to Canossa ye are.
Persistin' to shtay
When ye're ordered away--
Bedad! that is goin' too far!
RE-EDIFIED.
Lord of the tempest, pray refrain
From leveling this church again.
Now in its doom, as so you've willed it,
We acquiesce. But _you'll_ rebuild it.
A BULLETIN.
"Lothario is very low,"
So all the doctors tell.
Nay, nay, not _so_--he will be, though,
If ever he get well.
FROM THE MINUTES.
When, with the force of a ram that discharges its ponderous body
Straight at the rear elevation of the luckless culler of simples,
The foot of Herculean Kilgore--statesman of surname suggestive
Or carnage unspeakable!--lit like a missile prodigious
Upon the Congressional door with a monstrous and mighty momentum,
Causing that vain ineffective bar to political freedom
To fly from its hinges, effacing the nasal excrescence of Dingley,
That luckless one, decently veiling the ruin with ready bandanna,
Lamented the loss of his eminence, sadly with sobs as follows:
"Ah, why was I ever elected to the halls of legislation,
So soon to be shown the door with pitiless emphasis? Truly,
I've leaned on a broken Reed, and the same has gone back on me meanly.
Where now is my prominence, erstwhile in council conspicuous, patent?
Alas, I did never before understand what I now see clearly,
To wit, that Democracy tends to level all human distinctions!"
His fate so untoward and sad the Pine-tree statesman, bewailing,
Stood in the corridor there while Democrats freed from confinement
Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him,
Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking:
"O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?"
WOMAN IN POLITICS.
What, madam, run for School Director? You?
And want my vote and influence? Well, well,
That beats me! Gad! where _are_ we drifting to?
In all my life I never have heard tell
Of such sublime presumption, and I smell
A nigger in the fence! Excuse me, madam;
We statesmen sometimes speak like the old Adam.
But now you mention it--well, well, who knows?
We might, that's certain, give the sex a show.
I have a cousin--teacher. I suppose
If I stand in and you 're elected--no?
You'll make no bargains? That's a pretty go!
But understand that school administration
Belongs to Politics, not Education.
We'll pass the teacher deal; but it were wise
To understand each other at the start.
You know my business--books and school supplies;
You'd hardly, if elected, have the heart
Some small advantage to deny me--part
Of all my profits to be yours. What? Stealing?
Please don't express yourself with so much feeling.
You pain me, truly. Now one question more.
Suppose a fair young man should ask a place
As teacher--would you (pardon) shut the door
Of the Department in his handsome face
Until--I know not how to put the case--
Would you extort a kiss to pay your favor?
Good Lord! you laugh? I thought the matter graver.
Well, well, we can't do business, I suspect:
A woman has no head for useful tricks.
My profitable offers you reject
And will not promise anything to fix
The opposition. That's not politics.
Good morning. Stay--I'm chaffing you, conceitedly.
Madam, I mean to vote for you--repeatedly.
TO AN ASPIRANT.
What! you a Senator--you, Mike de Young?
Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung?
Sir, if all Senators were such as you,
Their hands so crimson and so slender, too,--
(Shaped to the pocket for commercial work,
For literary, fitted to the dirk)--
So black their hearts, so lily-white their livers,
The toga's touch would give a man the shivers.
A BALLAD OF PIKEVILLE.
Down in Southern Arizona where the Gila monster thrives,
And the "Mescalero," gifted with a hundred thousand lives,
Every hour renounces one of them by drinking liquid flame--
The assassinating wassail that has given him his name;
Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen
To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green,
While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread
With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head;
Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun,
And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run,
Lived a colony of settlers--old Missouri was the State
Where they formerly resided at a prehistoric date.
Now, the spot that had been chosen for this colonizing scheme
Was as waterless, believe me, as an Arizona stream.
The soil was naught but ashes, by the breezes driven free,
And an acre and a quarter were required to sprout a pea.
So agriculture languished, for the land would not produce,
And for lack of water, whisky was the beverage in use--
Costly whisky, hauled in wagons many a weary, weary day,
Mostly needed by the drivers to sustain them on their way.
Wicked whisky! King of Evils! Why, O, why did God create
Such a curse and thrust it on us in our inoffensive state?
Once a parson came among them, and a holy man was he;
With his ailing stomach whisky wouldn't anywise agree;
So he knelt upon the _mesa_ and he prayed with all his chin
That the Lord would send them water or incline their hearts to gin.
Scarcely was the prayer concluded ere an earthquake shook the land,
And with copious effusion springs burst out on every hand!
Merrily the waters gurgled, and the shock which gave them birth
Fitly was by some declared a temperance movement of the earth.
Astounded by the miracle, the people met that night
To celebrate it properly by some religious rite;
And 'tis truthfully recorded that before the moon had sunk
Every man and every woman was devotionally drunk.
A half a standard gallon (says history) per head
Of the best Kentucky prime was at that ceremony shed.
O, the glory of that country! O, the happy, happy folk.
By the might of prayer delivered from Nature's broken yoke!
Lo! the plains to the horizon all are yellowing with rye,
And the corn upon the hill-top lifts its banners to the sky!
Gone the wagons, gone the drivers, and the road is grown to grass,
Over which the incalescent Bourbon did aforetime pass.
Pikeville (that's the name they've given, in their wild, romantic way,
To that irrigation district) now distills, statistics say,
Something like a hundred gallons, out of each recurrent crop,
To the head of population--and consumes it, every drop!
A BUILDER.
I saw the devil--he was working free:
A customs-house he builded by the sea.
"Why do you this?" The devil raised his head;
"Churches and courts I've built enough," he said.
AN AUGURY.
Upon my desk a single spray,
With starry blossoms fraught.
I write in many an idle way,
Thinking one serious thought.
"O flowers, a fine Greek name ye bear,
And with a fine Greek grace."
Be still, O heart, that turns to share
The sunshine of a face.
"Have ye no messages--no brief,
Still sign: 'Despair', or 'Hope'?"
A sudden stir of stem and leaf--
A breath of heliotrope!
LUSUS POLITICUS.
Come in, old gentleman. How do you do?
Delighted, I'm sure, that you've called.
I'm a sociable sort of a chap and you
Are a pleasant-appearing person, too,
With a head agreeably bald.
That's right--sit down in the scuttle of coal
And put up your feet in a chair.
It is better to have them there:
And I've always said that a hat of lead,
Such as I see you wear,
Was a better hat than a hat of glass.
And your boots of brass
Are a natural kind of boots, I swear.
"May you blow your nose on a paper of pins?"
Why, certainly, man, why not?
I rather expected you'd do it before,
When I saw you poking it in at the door.
It's dev'lish hot--
The weather, I mean. "You are twins"?
Why, that was evident at the start,
From the way that you paint your head
In stripes of purple and red,
With dots of yellow.
That proves you a fellow
With a love of legitimate art.
"You've bitten a snake and are feeling bad"?
That's very sad,
But Longfellow's words I beg to recall:
Your lot is the common lot of all.
"Horses are trees and the moon is a sneeze"?
That, I fancy, is just as you please.
Some think that way and others hold
The opposite view;
I never quite knew,
For the matter o' that,
When everything's been said--
May I offer this mat
If you _will_ stand on your head?
I suppose I look to be upside down
From your present point of view.
It's a giddy old world, from king to clown,
And a topsy-turvy, too.
But, worthy and now uninverted old man,
_You're_ built, at least, on a normal plan
If ever a truth I spoke.
Smoke?
Your air and conversation
Are a liberal education,
And your clothes, including the metal hat
And the brazen boots--what's that?
"You never could stomach a Democrat
Since General Jackson ran?
You're another sort, but you predict
That your party'll get consummately licked?"
Good God! what a queer old man!
BEREAVEMENT.
A Countess (so they tell the tale)
Who dwelt of old in Arno's vale,
Where ladies, even of high degree,
Know more of love than of A.B.C,
Came once with a prodigious bribe
Unto the learned village scribe,
That most discreet and honest man
Who wrote for all the lover clan,
Nor e'er a secret had betrayed--
Save when inadequately paid.
"Write me," she sobbed--"I pray thee do--
A book about the Prince di Giu--
A book of poetry in praise
Of all his works and all his ways;
The godlike grace of his address,
His more than woman's tenderness,
His courage stern and lack of guile,
The loves that wantoned in his smile.
So great he was, so rich and kind,
I'll not within a fortnight find
His equal as a lover. O,
My God! I shall be drowned in woe!"
"What! Prince di Giu has died!" exclaimed
The honest man for letters famed,
The while he pocketed her gold;
"Of what'?--if I may be so bold."
Fresh storms of tears the lady shed:
"I stabbed him fifty times," she said.
AN INSCRIPTION
FOR A STATUE OF NAPOLEON, AT WEST POINT.
A famous conqueror, in battle brave,
Who robbed the cradle to supply the grave.
His reign laid quantities of human dust:
He fell upon the just and the unjust.
A PICKBRAIN.
What! imitate me, friend? Suppose that you
With agony and difficulty do
What I do easily--what then? You've got
A style I heartily wish _I_ had not.
If I from lack of sense and you from choice
Grieve the judicious and the unwise rejoice,
No equal censure our deserts will suit--
We both are fools, but you're an ape to boot!
CONVALESCENT.
"By good men's prayers see Grant restored!"
Shouts Talmage, pious creature!
Yes, God, by supplication bored
From every droning preacher,
Exclaimed: "So be it, tiresome crew--
But I've a crow to pick with _you_."
THE NAVAL CONSTRUCTOR.
He looked upon the ships as they
All idly lay at anchor,
Their sides with gorgeous workmen gay--
The riveter and planker--
Republicans and Democrats,
Statesmen and politicians.
He saw the swarm of prudent rats
Swimming for land positions.
He marked each "belted cruiser" fine,
Her poddy life-belts floating
In tether where the hungry brine
Impinged upon her coating.
He noted with a proud regard,
As any of his class would,
The poplar mast and poplar yard
Above the hull of bass-wood.
He saw the Eastlake frigate tall,
With quaintly carven gable,
Hip-roof and dormer-window--all
With ivy formidable.
In short, he saw our country's hope
In best of all conditions--
Equipped, to the last spar and rope,
By working politicians.
He boarded then the noblest ship
And from the harbor glided.
"Adieu, adieu!" fell from his lip.
Verdict: "He suicided."
1881.
DETECTED.
In Congress once great Mowther shone,
Debating weighty matters;
Now into an asylum thrown,
He vacuously chatters.
If in that legislative hall
His wisdom still he 'd vented,
It never had been known at all
That Mowther was demented.
BIMETALISM.
Ben Bulger was a silver man,
Though not a mine had he:
He thought it were a noble plan
To make the coinage free.
"There hain't for years been sech a time,"
Said Ben to his bull pup,
"For biz--the country's broke and I'm
The hardest kind of up.
"The paper says that that's because
The silver coins is sea'ce,
And that the chaps which makes the laws
Puts gold ones in their place.
"They says them nations always be
Most prosperatin' where
The wolume of the currency
Ain't so disgustin' rare."
His dog, which hadn't breakfasted,
Dissented from his view,
And wished that he could swell, instead,
The volume of cold stew.
"Nobody'd put me up," said Ben,
"With patriot galoots
Which benefits their feller men
By playin' warious roots;
"But havin' all the tools about,
I'm goin' to commence
A-turnin' silver dollars out
Wuth eighty-seven cents.
"The feller takin' 'em can't whine:
(No more, likewise, can I):
They're better than the genooine,
Which mostly satisfy.
"It's only makin' coinage free,
And mebby might augment
The wolume of the currency
A noomerous per cent."
I don't quite see his error nor
Malevolence prepense,
But fifteen years they gave him for
That technical offense.
THE RICH TESTATOR.
He lay on his bed and solemnly "signed,"
Gasping--perhaps 'twas a jest he meant:
"This of a sound and disposing mind
Is the last ill-will and contestament."
TWO METHODS.
To bucks and ewes by the Good Shepherd fed
The Priest delivers masses for the dead,
And even from estrays outside the fold
Death for the masses he would not withhold.
The Parson, loth alike to free or kill,
Forsakes the souls already on the grill,
And, God's prerogative of mercy shamming,
Spares living sinners for a harder damning.
FOUNDATIONS OF THE STATE