{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_50666/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_50666","id":"gutenberg_50666","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50666","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","Sea poetry"],"text":"S O N G S O F T H E S E A\n\n AND\n\n L A Y S O F T H E L A N D\n\n\n\n\n SONGS OF THE SEA\n\n AND\n\n LAYS OF THE LAND\n\n\n BY\n CHARLES GODFREY LELAND\n\n\n\n LONDON\n ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK\n 1895\n\n\n\n\n PREFACE\n\nAmong the songs in this collection are the Brand New Ballads already\nknown more or less to the public, several of them having an American\nnewspaper circulation, while a few are given at times in public\nreadings; since I have learned, for example, that \u201cIn Nevada\u201d was one of\nthe stock-pieces of Mr. Clifford Harrison. They now reappear amended and\nwith additions.\n\nIn the \u201cSongs of the Sea\u201d the reader will not fail to observe that three\nor four, such as the \u201cMermaid\u201d and \u201cTime for Us to Go,\u201d are not by me at\nall. They are sailors\u2019 songs of the olden time, introduced as\nsuggestions for other lyrics, as I have indeed declared in the text, and\nalso to aid in the main purpose or idea which inspires the whole\ncollection\u2014they being in this respect like stones from more ancient\nedifices built into new houses, as was the wont of men in the middle\nage.\n\nThis main purpose was to set forth with scrupulous care, as of a statue\nphotographed from many sides, the mariner of the sailing\u2014not\nsteaming\u2014ship, who is now rapidly passing away, although some tens of\nthousands of the species are still to be found in the remoter routes of\ntravel. This kind of man should be interesting, because he is almost the\nonly one who is drawn into his calling by a desire to rove about the\nworld and lead an adventurous, reckless, manly life. Into this life\nentered, I may say, as \u201cvitalising elements,\u201d \u201cshipwrecks and disasters\nof the sea,\u201d the extremes of discipline and dissipation, as well as\nthose of cynical scepticism and superstition, the seeing, like Ulysses,\ncities and men, and the consciousness, so clear to undeveloped minds and\nsmaller natures, of belonging to a \u201cpeculiar\u201d class. This I have borne\nin mind most earnestly, and those who perceive it will also find that in\nthis spirit the following notes and sketches in song illustrate, I trust\naccurately, a consistent ideal text, and that all the songs unite to\nform a single poem.\n\nAs for the many scraps, \u201cchanties,\u201d choruses, sayings, similes, and bits\nof sea-lore worked up into the lyrics here and there, I make no attempt\nwhatever to indicate what is borrowed; all that I can say of it is, that\nif the mere gathering the stones is all the merit of making a mosaic\npicture (as many seem to think), then I could claim little merit for\noriginality. But as this is not a folk-lore book, in which a writer is\nheld sternly accountable \u201cto give authority for every word,\u201d and as a\nmass of notes would have simply defeated the whole aim of the book, I\nhave preferred making myself amenable to the charge of plagiarism to\nboring my reader\u2014even as an Italian devoted servant of whom I once\nheard, preferred to be carried off by the police, on the charge of\nstealing oranges, rather than awaken and disturb his master who could\nhave explained the matter. I can, however, truly say that as regards\nideas, incidents, tales, turns of speech and idioms, current sayings,\nand so on, from poetry down to vulgarity, I have literally taken so much\nfrom sailors themselves that the work, if analysed, would be a curiosity\nof collocation, like the poems made up entirely of proverbs, or the\nSermon of Texts.\n\nHere I would mention my obligation to more than one ancient mariner, and\nspecially to my old friend, Captain Stead, now so long a dweller at the\nLangham Hotel, for advising about, and revising, these ballads. These\nfriends having carefully studied the work and corrected or modelled its\nevery sentence into ship-shape, have been kind enough to assure me that\nit would hold its own in the forecastle, as a real thing, and not an\nimitation; which saying uttered in sooth and truth especially by a\nfriend of forty years\u2019 experience in sailing-vessels, mostly \u201cbefore the\nwar,\u201d was to me greatly encouraging.\n\nWhat I have above written of the \u201cSongs of the Sea\u201d is equally true of\nthe other ballads in this volume. They also form a series of eccentric\npictures of American life after the war, brought together, not like\nchance pictures in a scrap-book, but as I before said, to carry out one\nidea in reference to a special subject. In this spirit and to this end\nwere they written, from current prose tales. Nor have I ever forgotten\nthat there is in them for the future a kind of folk-lore which is never\nso apparent to those who live in it as to those who inherit it. When I\nwas a small boy, there was in my aunt\u2019s kitchen in Milford,\nMassachusetts, a cheese-knife, which had no special interest to anybody\nsave to me, because it had been the very sword carried by General Eaton\nin his famous march over the Desert to attack Algiers. Nowadays it would\nbe greatly prized. So it is sometimes worth while to think of these\nthings which we now possess, and how rapidly they are hastening to\nbecome curiosities\u2014I myself having lived to see every object familiar\nto me in youth become bric-\u00e0-brac. In the last age, everything not in\nthe newest fashion was despised\u2014in this there is a highly-cultured\nclass just beginning to show itself beyond the Realists and disciples of\nMental-analytical Chemistry, who look alternately at the Past and\nFuture,\n\n Even as Janus on the Capitol\n Saw all that was or ever yet would be.\n\nThere may be a few among the jealous guardians or spokes around the Hub\nwho may demand by what right I invade the sacred precincts of Boston,\nand sing about its past. Well, my boyhood was half passed in Boston or\nnear it; there the romance of sailor life, which was marvellous in those\ntimes, imbued me, and then and there in common with my mates I devoured\nthe _Mariners\u2019 Chronicle_, _Shipwrecks and Disasters of the Sea_, _Lives\nof the Buccaneers_, and listened with avidity to the tales of those who\nhad been on the briny deep. Nearly all my first-cousins had at one time\nor other run away and gone to sea or taken long voyages. Among the\nformer were Benjamin Stimson, the \u201cS\u201d of _Two Years Before the Mast_;\nCharles Leland, who afterwards grew like Samuel Jackson to the height of\nseven feet; and Samuel Godfrey. From these and many more I learned an\nincredible number of sea stories and songs, none of which I ever forgot,\nbeing to an extraordinary degree accustomed to keep repeating to myself\nthese \u201cstranger legends of the olden time.\u201d Hence it comes that I have\nin my mind such vivid memories of the old North End of Boston.\n\nI would say in conclusion what will be apparent enough to many, that\nthese Ballads make no great pretence to be poetry. They consist of\nincidents or small \u201cmotives\u201d cast into rhyme or measure, as the easiest\nmethod of giving them a certain value, just as a tune brings out a song.\nMost rhymers are criticised more or less severely for pretending to be\npoets; all that I can claim for this volume is, that it is a kind of\ncollection of curiosities which, as they have seemed to me to be worth\nremembering, will, I trust, be regarded by others as worth reading.\n\n CHARLES GODFREY LELAND.\n FLORENCE, 1894.\n\n\n\n\n CONTENTS\n\n\n SONGS OF THE SEA\n\n PAGE\n THE OLD TAVERN 1\n EL CAPITAN GENERAL 5\n UNCLE SAM 9\n MOTHER CAREY 13\n THE BIRD CREW 17\n DAVY JONES 19\n THE DEVIL\u2019S POT 21\n ONE, TWO, THREE 24\n LA BELLA STREGA 27\n THE BEAUTIFUL WITCH 31\n THE WITCH\u2019S BOX 35\n THE MERMAID 41\n THE MERMAN 43\n THE WIZARD FINN 51\n CHARLEY BUFF 55\n BOLD ROBIN ROVER 59\n TIME FOR US TO GO 64\n ROLLING OVER 67\n THE MUSQUITO 71\n STAND FROM UNDER! 73\n NEAR HAVANNA 77\n THE THREE DEAD MEN 80\n THE LADY-SAILOR 82\n THE SPANISH SAILOR\u2019S SONG 84\n THE LOVER TO THE SAILOR 86\n GREEN CORN AND POTATOES 87\n THE SAILOR\u2019S FAREWELL 90\n MACKEREL SIGNS 94\n TRUE BLUE 96\n THE STORY OF SAMUEL JACKSON 99\n THE DANDY SHIP 104\n JACK OF ALL TRADES 107\n THE GIRL WIND 110\n\n LAYS OF THE LAND\n\n THE RISE AND FALL OF GLORYVILLE 115\n IN THE WRONG BOX 123\n ZION JERSEY BOGGS 130\n THE BALLAD OF THE GREEN OLD MAN 142\n CARRYING COALS 148\n CAREY, OF CARSON 150\n JOSEPHI IN BENICIA 156\n THE STORY OF A LIE 161\n THE LEGEND OF SAINT ANTHONY 164\n A RUSSIAN LYRIC 169\n MELODRAMNATION 173\n A TALE OF IDAHO 177\n A CALIFORNIAN ROMANCE 182\n THE STORY OF MR. SCROPER, ARCHITECT 187\n THAT INTERESTIN\u2019 BOY 190\n MISS MILES, THE TELEGRAPH GIRL 191\n AN AMERICAN COCK-TALE 198\n JUDGE WYMAN 207\n IN NEVADA 213\n THE PHILANTHROPIC CLUB 223\n THE COLOURED FORTUNE-HUNTER 227\n PENN 228\n BALLAD OF THE FOXES 232\n EST MODUS IN REBUS 237\n THE MASHER 243\n ARIZONA JOHN 249\n THE BALLAD OF CHARITY 252\n MULTUM IN PARVO 256\n THE ORGANIST OF BERGAMO 258\n THE GOTH AND THE PIGEON 268\n REFLECTIONS IN A PRINTING-OFFICE 275\n\n APPENDIX 277\n\n\n\n\n S O N G S O F T H E S E A\n\n\n\n\n I SAW three sailors synging, hey howe!\n Upon yon lea-land hey!\n I hearde three mariners rynging, rumbelowe:\n Upon yon sea strand gaye.\n Synge hey howe, rumbelowe,\n Row the boat, Norman, rowe!\n\n _Percy\u2019s Relics._\n\n\n\n\n THE OLD TAVERN\n\n\n In the North End of Boston, long ago;\n Although \u2019tis yet within my memory;\n There were of gabled houses many a row,\n With overhanging storeys two or three,\n And many with half-doors over whose end\n Leaning upon her elbows, the good-wife\n At eventide conversed with many a friend\n Of all the little chances of their life;\n Small ripples in a stream which ran full slow\n In the North End of Boston, long ago.\n\n And \u2019mid these houses was a Hostelrie\n Frequented by the people of the sea,\n Known as the Boy and Barrel, from its sign:\n A jolly urchin on a cask of wine\n Bearing the words which puzzled every eye\u2014\n _Orbus In Tactu Mainet_[1] Heaven knows why.\n Even there a bit of Latin made a show,\n In the North End of Boston\u2014long ago.\n\n And many a sailor, when his cruise was o\u2019er,\n Bore straight for it soon as he touched the shore:\n In many a stormy night upon the sea\n He\u2019d thought upon the Boy\u2014and of the spree\n He\u2019d have when there, and let all trouble go,\n In the North End of Boston, long ago.\n\n There, like their vessels in a friendly port,\n Met many mariners of every kind,\n Spinning strange yarns of many a varied sort,\n Well sheltered from the ocean and the wind;\n In a long low dark room they lounged at ease;\n Strange men there were from many a distant land,\n And there above the high old chimney-piece\n Were curiosities from many a strand,\n Which often made strange tales and memories flow\n In the North End of Boston, long ago.\n\n And there I often sat to hear those tales,\n From men who\u2019d passed through storm and fight and fire,\n Of mighty icebergs and stupendous whales,\n Of shipwrecked crews and of adventures dire,\n Until the thought came to me on a time,\n While I was listening to that merry throng,\n That I would write their stories out in rhyme,\n And weave into it many a sailor\u2019s song,\n That men might something of the legends know\n Of the North End of Boston, long ago.\n\n First it was said that Captain Kidd in truth\n Had revelled in that tavern with his crew,\n And there it was he lost the Golden Tooth\n Which brought him treasure, and the gossips knew\n Moll Pitcher dwelt there in the days of yore,\n And Peter Rugg had stopped before the door:\n Tom Walker there did with the Devil go\n In the North End of Boston, long ago.\n\n Nor had I long to wait, for at the word\n Some one observed that he had seen in Spain\n A captain hung\u2014which Abner Chapin heard\n And said, \u201cI too upon the Spanish Main\n Met with a man well known unto us all,\n Who nearly hung a Captain General.\u201d\n He told the tale and I did rhyme it so;\n In the North End of Boston, long ago.\n\n-----\n\n[1]\n\nSee Appendix.\n\n\n\n\n EL CAPITAN GENERAL\n\n\n There was a Captain General who ruled in Vera Cruz,\n And what we used to hear of him was always evil news;\n He was a pirate on the sea\u2014a robber on the shore:\n The Se\u00f1or Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\n\n There was a Yankee skipper who round about did roam,\n His name was Stephen Folger and Nantucket was his home,\n And having gone to Vera Cruz he had been skinned full sore\n By the Se\u00f1or Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\n\n But having got away alive, though all his cash was gone,\n He said, \u201cIf there is Vengeance, I will surely try it on!\n And I do wish I may be damned if I don\u2019t clear the score\n With Se\u00f1or Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador!\u201d\n\n He shipped a crew of seventy men\u2014well-arm\u00e9d men were they,\n And sixty of them in the hold he darkly stowed away,\n And sailing back to Vera Cruz was sighted from the shore,\n By the Se\u00f1or Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\n\n With twenty-five _soldados_ he came on board so pleased\n And said: \u201c_Maldito_ Yankee\u2014again your ship is seized.\n How many sailors have you got?\u201d Said Folger, \u201cTen\u2014no more,\u201d\n To the Captain Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\n\n \u201cBut come into my cabin and take a glass of wine,\n I do suppose as usual, I\u2019ll have to pay a fine;\n I have got some old Madeira and we\u2019ll talk the matter o\u2019er\u2014\n My Capitan Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\u201d\n\n And as over that Madeira the Captain General boozed,\n It seemed to him as if his head was getting quite confused,\n For it happened that some morphine had travelled from \u201cthe store\u201d\n To the glass of Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\n\n \u201cWhat is it makes the vessel roll? What sounds are these I hear?\n It seems as if the rising waves were beating on my ear!\u201d\n \u201cOh it is the breaking of the surf\u2014just that and nothing more,\n My Captain Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador!\u201d\n\n The Governor was in a sleep which muddled all his brains,\n The seventy men had got his gang and put them all in chains,\n And when he woke the following day he could not see the shore,\n For he was out on the blue water\u2014the Don San Salvador.\n\n \u201cNow do you see that yard-arm\u2014and understand the thing?\u201d\n Said Captain Folger, \u201cFor all from that yard-arm you shall swing,\n Or forty thousand dollars you must pay me from your store,\n My Captain Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\u201d\n\n The Capitano took a pen\u2014the order he did sign,\n \u201cO Se\u00f1or Yankee!\u2014but you charge amazing high for wine!\u201d\n But \u2019twas not till the draft was paid they let him go ashore,\n El Se\u00f1or Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\n\n The greatest sharp some day will find another sharper wit,\n It always makes the devil laugh to see a biter bit;\n It takes two Spaniards any day to come a Yankee o\u2019er:\n Even two like Don Alonzo Estab\u00e1n San Salvador.\n\n And when this tale was told, another man\n Cried out, \u201cI\u2019ll swear \u2019tis true as true can be,\n Unto his health we\u2019ll have all round a can!\n For Captain Folger is well known to me.\n Now I will sing \u2018first lines\u2019 of \u2018Uncle Sam,\u2019\n And he who can shall add at once a second,\n I\u2019ll call you one by one\u2014now here I am,\n And he who balks shall be the loser reckoned,\n And pay for drinks all round\u201d\u2014\n \u201cAll right,\u201d they roared,\n \u201cNow then begin, for we are all on board!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n UNCLE SAM\n\n\n When there\u2019s rain and shine together,\n _Chorus._ Yo heave ho!\n Uncle Sam is in the weather:\n _Chorus._ Yo heave ho!\n\n When the sun shines through a fog,\n Yo heave ho!\n Uncle Samuel drinks his grog:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When the blue sky shows in pieces,\n Yo heave ho!\n Those are Uncle Samuel\u2019s breeches:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When a cloud is low and flat,\n Yo heave ho!\n That is Uncle Samuel\u2019s hat:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When the wind is loud and bad,\n Yo heave ho!\n Then Old Sam is getting mad:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When the wind begins to bellow,\n Yo heave ho!\n Uncle Sam is in the cellar:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When the sky is clean and red,\n Yo heave ho!\n Uncle Sam is gone to bed:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When you hear the wind a-roaring,\n Yo heave ho!\n That is Uncle Sam a-snoring:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When you see the lightning spooning,\n Yo heave ho!\n Then old Uncle Sam\u2019s harpooning:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When you hear the wind a-barking,\n Yo heave ho!\n Uncle Sam has gone a-sharking:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When you see a santo-corpus,\n Yo heave ho!\n Uncle Sam is arter a porpus:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When the water gabbles too much,\n Yo heave ho!\n Uncle Sam is talking Dutch:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When the sea hawk\u2019s scream is heard,\n Yo heave ho!\n He wants to know if there\u2019s Dutch on board:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n When the wind\u2019s before the rain,\n Yo heave ho!\n Soon you can make sail again:\n Yo heave ho!\n\n \u201cBelay that song I say\u2014\u2019tis gettin\u2019 weary:\u201d\n Cried out a voice, \u201cLet\u2019s change to Mother Carey!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n MOTHER CAREY\n\n\n With the wind old Mother Carey,\n Yo ho oh!\n Churns the sea to make her dairy:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When you see a storm a-brewin\u2019,\n Yo ho oh!\n That is Mother Carey\u2019s doin\u2019:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When you see Mother Carey\u2019s chickens,\n Yo ho oh!\n Then look out to catch the dickens!\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When you hear the icebergs rattle,\n Yo ho oh!\n Those are Mother Carey\u2019s cattle:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When you see them split\u2014a-halving,\n Yo ho oh!\n Then Mother Carey\u2019s cows are calving:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When you see a flying fish,\n Yo ho oh!\n Lose no time but make your wish:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n Irish pennons when they\u2019re flying,\n Yo ho oh!\n Set old Mother Carey crying:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When the sea-gulls dip for slush,\n Yo ho oh!\n Mother Carey stirs the mush:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When one sea-gull follows you,\n Yo ho oh!\n Mother Carey soon makes it two:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When the sea-gulls fly by two,\n Yo ho oh!\n Soon good luck will come to you:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When the sea-gulls fly by threes,\n Yo ho oh!\n Soon you\u2019ll have a spanking breeze:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n If seven follow you into port,\n Yo ho oh!\n There the sailors\u2019ll have good sport:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When a rope trails in the water,\n Yo ho oh!\n That is Mother Carey\u2019s garter:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n When the clouds are red as roses,\n Yo ho oh!\n Those are Mother Carey\u2019s posies:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n If you want to win your Mary,\n Yo ho oh!\n Throw out a biscuit to Mother Carey:\n Yo ho oh!\n\n And so they would have chantyd all night long,\n But some one broke it with another song.\n\n\n\n\n THE BIRD CREW\n\n\n The Albatross\n Is the captain and boss,\n Haul away boys, haul away!\n The sea-gull queers\n Are the officeers,\n Haul away boys, haul away!\n And the Carey chickens as I guess\n Is every one an A.B.S.,\n Haul away boys, haul away!\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard,\u201d said Chapin, \u201cmany folk agree,\n Those birds are souls of sailors lost at sea,\n\n And often one around the vessel flies\n To give us warning ere the storms arise.\u201d\n\n \u201cTalkin\u2019 of spirits in the vasty deep,\u201d\n Said Ezra Bullard, late of Marblehead,\n \u201cThere\u2019s one at least who never goes to sleep,\n And mighty little good of him is said;\n His special dispensation is to watch\n The bottom of the ocean, and to see\n It don\u2019t fall out\u2014for if it did we catch\n The very direst kind of misery,\n For all the water runnin\u2019 through the hole\n Would leave it dry as you can understand,\n And from the Arctic to the \u2019tother pole,\n \u2019Twould be one thunderin\u2019 lot of empty land.\u201d\n And thereupon in his south-wester tones\n He let us have the song of Davy Jones.\n\n\n\n\n DAVY JONES\n\n\n Down in the sea among sand and stones,\n There lives the old fellow called Davy Jones.\n\n When storms come up he sighs and groans,\n And that is the singing of Davy Jones.\n\n His chest is full of dead men\u2019s bones,\n And that is the locker of Davy Jones.\n\n Davy is Welsh you may hear by his tones,\n For a regular Welsher is Davy Jones.\n\n Whenever a fish gets drowned, he moans,\n So tender-hearted is Davy Jones.\n\n Thousands of ships the old man owns,\n But none go a-sailing for Davy Jones.\n\n \u201cWell\u2014since you talk o\u2019 the bottom of the sea,\u201d\n Said Enoch Doolittle of Salem town,\n \u201cI know a yarn that beats you full and free,\n Because, d\u2019ye know, it takes you deeper down,\n And if you\u2019re taken down\u2014of course you\u2019re beat.\u201d\n \u201cThat\u2019s so,\u201d cried all, \u201cso now your yarn repeat!\u201d\n \u201cAll right,\u201d quoth Doolittle, \u201cI\u2019ll serve it hot,\n Because, d\u2019ye see, it\u2019s called The Devil\u2019s Pot.\n But \u2019fore I dive into the salty brine,\n Give me a gill of white New England wine!\n Take one all round to benefit the pub.\n Now for the bottom of the pickle tub.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE DEVIL\u2019S POT[2]\n\n\n There\u2019s a place where you see the Atlantic heave\n Like water boiling hot;\n Where you come with grief and with joy you leave,\n And they call it the Devil\u2019s Pot.\n\n Now there was a witch in the good old time,\n And she had such power, they say,\n Through rocks or stones or sand or lime,\n She could always make her way.\n\n One night on a broom she went with a whirr;\n The devil he saw her fly,\n And the devil he fell in love with her\n As she went sailing by.\n\n She flew like the devil to scape away,\n And the devil so did he,\n And she jumped from her broom without delay\n And she dived to the bottom of the sea.\n\n And she bored a hole when she got down,\n And round and round she twirled,\n And closed it behind as she went on,\n Till she went straight through the world.\n\n And the devil he dived in the water deep,\n And he made it boil like pitch\n As he roared and raved with many a leap,\n But he never could find the witch.\n\n And still he stirs it by night and day,\n And seeks and finds her not;\n And that is the reason, the sailors say,\n Why it\u2019s called the Devil\u2019s Pot.\n\n \u201cThey say that there are witches everywhere,\u201d\n Said Jones of Chesapeake, \u201ca livin\u2019 free;\n Some in the rocks, some flyin\u2019 in the air,\n And some, in course, like fishes in the sea.\n I\u2019ve often heard strange voices in the night\u2014\n They wan\u2019t no birds I\u2019ll swer, nor any sitch\u2014\n One called me once by name; it gim\u2019me fright\u2014\n And that I\u2019m sartin was a water-witch.\n One can\u2019t in nat\u2019ral wise account for that,\n All you can call it is a Mr. E\u2014\u2014\n But there are witches, I will bet a hat;\n And so I\u2019ll sing the song of One, Two, Three,\n Fust drinkin\u2019 all your healths,\u201d\u2014no more he said,\n But in a good round voice went straight ahead:\n\n-----\n\n[2] The Devil\u2019s Pot is a place on the North Atlantic route where,\naccording to sailors, there is always bad weather.\n\n\n\n\n ONE, TWO, THREE\n\n\n I saw three witches as the wind blew cold\n In a red light to the lee;\n Bold they were and over-bold\n As they sailed over the sea;\n Calling for One, Two, Three!\n Calling for One, Two, Three!\n And I think I can hear\n It a-ringing in my ear,\n A-calling for the One, Two, Three.\n\n And clouds came over the sky,\n And the wind it blew hard and free,\n And the waves grew bold and over-bold\n As we sailed over the sea;\n Howling for One, Two, Three!\n Howling for their One, Two, Three!\n Oh I think I can hear\n It a-ringing in my ear,\n A-howling for their One, Two, Three!\n\n And the storm came roaring on,\n Such a storm as I never did see,\n And the storm it was bold and over-bold,\n And as bad as a storm could be;\n A-roaring for its One, Two, Three!\n A-howling for its One, Two, Three!\n Oh I think I can hear\n It a-howling in my ear,\n A-growling for its One, Two, Three!\n\n And a wave came over the deck,\n As big as a wave could be,\n And it took away the captain and the mate and a man:\n It had got the One, Two, Three!\n And it went with the One, Two, Three!\n Oh I think I can hear\n It a-rolling in my ear,\n As it went with the One, Two, Three.\n\n This being cheered, I said, \u201cSome time ago\n I made a song in the Italian tongue\n About a witch and pirate\u2014which for you\n Shall, if you like, be now in English sung.\u201d\n \u201cNo, give it first,\u201d cried Saltonstall, \u201cby jingo!\n In its own nateral, Eyetalian lingo;\n What I don\u2019t know of it ain\u2019t worth a cent;\n Even to Rome I several times have went,\n In Naples, too, I\u2019ve had full many a turn\n And know old Spartivento like a dern;\n And most of us, I reckon\u2014though we\u2019re Yankee\u2014\n Can go the Dago, or some _lingua frankey_.\n We ain\u2019t so ignorant of what we know;\n So go ahead, Signor\u2014_prestissimo_!\n Ef we don\u2019t catch the sense \u2019twill be a pity.\u201d\u2014\n So thus encouraged I began my ditty:\n\n\n\n\n LA BELLA STREGA\n\n\n Era una bella strega\n Che si bagnava alla riva;\n Vennero i pirati,\n Lei presero captiva.\n\n Il vento era in poppa,\n Sull\u2019onde la nave ball\u00f2,\n La donna lacrimante\n Al capitan parl\u00f2:\n\n \u201cO Signor Capitano!\n O Capitan\u2019 del mar!\n Daro cento ducati\n Se tu mi lasci andar!\u201d\n\n \u201cNon prender\u00f2 cento ducati,\n Tu costi molto pi\u00f9,\n Io te vendr\u00f2 al Sultano,\u201d\n Disse il Capitano\n \u201cPer mille zecchini d\u2019oro\n Vi stimi troppo gi\u00f9.\u201d\n\n \u201cNon vuoi i cento ducati.\n Ebben, tu non gli avrai,\n Ho un\u2019amante amato\n Non mi abbandona mai.\u201d\n\n Essa sed\u00e9 sul ponte,\n Principi\u00f2 a cantar:\n \u201cVieni il mio amante!\u201d\n Da lontano il vento\n Si mette a mugghiar.\n\n Forte e pi\u00f9 forte\n La tempesta ruggio:\n Gridava il Capitano:\n \u201cIo credo che il tuo amante\n E il vento che corre innante,\n Ovvero il diavolo.\u201d\n\n Forte e pi\u00f9 forte\n La procella url\u00f2:\n \u201cSono roccie davanti,\n E il vento vien di dietro,\n Ben venuto sei tu, mio amante!\u201d\n La bella donna cant\u00f2.\n\n \u201cVattene al tuo amante\n All\u2019inferno a cantar!\u201d\n Disse il Capitano,\n E gett\u00f2 la donna fuori\n Della nave nel mar.\n\n Ma come un gabbiano\n Sull\u2019onde essa vol\u00f2:\n \u201cO mio Capitano!\n Non sarai appiccato,\n Ma sarai annegato;\n Per sempre addio!\u201d\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s derned good Dago,\u201d cried Jack Saltonstall;\n \u201cBlamed ef I didn\u2019t understand it all.\n For the best songs are easiest understood:\n Now then let\u2019s hear if t\u2019other side\u2019s as good!\n A song is like a bird\u2014\u2019cos birds do sing\u2014\n So carve us out the second breast and wing;\n And with your anthem bid our hearts rejoice:\u201d\n Encouraged thus I lifted up my voice.\n\n\n\n\n THE BEAUTIFUL WITCH\n\n\n A pretty witch was bathing\n By the beach one summer day;\n There came a boat with pirates\n Who carried her away.\n\n The ship had a breeze behind her,\n Over the waves went she!\n \u201cO Signor Capitano,\n O Captain of the Sea!\n I\u2019ll give you a hundred ducats,\n If you will set me free!\u201d\n\n \u201cI will not take a hundred;\n You\u2019re worth much more, you know:\n I\u2019ll sell you to the Sultan\n For a thousand golden sequins:\n You put yourself far too low.\u201d\n\n \u201cYou will not take a hundred,\n Very well then, let them be!\n But I have a constant lover\n Who, as you may discover,\n Will never abandon me.\u201d\n\n On the deck, before the rover,\n The witch began to sing:\n \u201cOh come to me, my lover!\u201d\n And the wind as it stole over\n Began to howl and ring.\n\n Louder and ever louder\n Became the tempest\u2019s roar,\n The captain in a passion\n Thus at the lady swore:\n \u201cI believe that your windy lover\n Is the devil and nothing more!\u201d\n\n Wilder and ever wilder\n The tempest raged and rang,\n \u201cThere are rocks ahead, and the wind dead aft,\n Thank you, my love!\u201d the lady laughed\n As unto the wind she sang.\n\n \u201cOh go with your cursed lover\n To _inferno_ to sing for me!\u201d\n So cried the angry captain,\n And threw the lady over\n To sink in the stormy sea.\n\n But changing into a sea-gull\n Over the waves she flew.\n \u201cO capitain, captain bold,\u201d sang she,\n \u201c\u2019Tis true you\u2019ve missed the gallows tree,\n But now you\u2019ll drown in the foaming sea,\n O captain, forever adieu!\u201d\n\n \u201cTalkin\u2019 of witches and magicianers,\u201d\n Cried out Jack Saltonstall of Newbury port,\n \u201cThey are the devil\u2019s own parishioners,\n And I knew one of a peculiar sort,\n Because he was a sailor\u2014had he been\n A lawyer, now, it wouldn\u2019t seem so queer:\n For conjurers \u2019mong us ain\u2019t often seen,\n And he was of the kind who ain\u2019t small beer,\n Possessing cash enough to roll in bliss:\n However that may be, the story\u2019s _this_.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE WITCH\u2019S BOX\n\n\n Once when I went upon a trip\n Likewise to the Southern sea,\n We had a man upon the ship\n And a wonderful man was he.\n\n A handsomer man I never did spy,\n At home or in any port;\n But there was something in his eye\n Of a most peculiar sort.\n\n And all in Trinidado\u2019s port\n Was a woman fair and rich,\n With her my messmate did consort,\n And I heard she was a witch.\n\n Her eyes, like his, had a greenish glare,\n They seemed to be quite of a level,\n And the general look of the loving pair\n Was exactly the look of the devil.\n\n Now when it was time to up and lift,\n And the ship must leave the docks,\n He came aboard with her parting gift,\n A brown little wooden box.\n\n Now this man had hardly a shirt to his back,\n When he started on this trip,\n And the mate declared that such a Jack\n Was a regular shame to the ship.\n\n Then this man he winked a dreadful wink,\n And said to the mate, \u201cI\u2019ll be floored:\n But I\u2019ve got more clothes in my box, I think,\n Than all of the men on board.\u201d\n\n Now his box was only one foot square,\n And what was our surprise\n When he opened it and pulled out a pair\n Of shirts before our eyes!\n\n Next came a hat and a jacket blue,\n With trousers of the best,\n For everything was nice and new,\n And so on with all the rest.\n\n And when he was drest, all spick and span,\n We observed upon our oaths\n That we didn\u2019t believe even our old man\n Had got such a suit of clothes.\n\n Twenty-four hours arter, I heard him say,\n And I thought it was very strange:\n \u201cI never wear my clothes but a day\n And now it is time to change.\n\n \u201cI make you a gift on \u2019em fair and plain,\n With a quid of tobacco to boot.\u201d\n Sayin\u2019 this he opened his box again,\n And pulled out another new suit.\n\n And the same thing happened the very next day,\n At about the very same bells,\n He took off his second suit so gay,\n And gave it to somebody else.\n\n So it happened every day again,\n Till he\u2019d rigged us all from his store;\n And such a dandy lot of men\n Were never in a ship before.\n\n Then we never had any scrimmages\n For fear of spilin\u2019 our slops:\n We looked like the graven images\n Before the tailors\u2019 shops.\n\n But a man named Knox from Edinboro toun,\n Always took the thing amiss,\n And often remarked with a doubtful frown:\n \u201cThere is something eereligious in this!\u201d\n\n So one day when our friend had opened his box,\n Before we could prevent,\n Up behind him came Mr. Knox\n And dropped in his New Testament.\n\n There came a flash of lightning bright,\n And an awful thunder\u2019s roar,\n And the box and the sailor went clean out o\u2019 sight,\n And we never beheld \u2019em more.\n\n And all to ashes and all to wreck\n Went our clothes, and we looked forlorn,\n For there we were standing on the deck\n As naked as we were born!\n\n And this is the lesson short and small,\n Which we learned from our liberal friend,\n That the things which cost you nothing at all\n Never come to any good in the end.\n\n And when the laugh at this had died away,\n Mose Brown of Bristol in the whaling line\n Said: \u201cMermaids are the witches of the sea,\n Which in good looks are really superfine.\n And on this subject I will give a song,\n Which I daresay you all already know,\n But anyway it isn\u2019t very long,\n Though it was made a hundred years ago,\n I guess that mermaids were much plentier then;\n Perhaps they\u2019re scared of steamboats and the swell\n Which drives the fish as foxes do a hen\u2014\n So like the steamers I will now propel.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE MERMAID\n\n\n One Friday morning we set sail[3]\n It was not far from land,\n When I espied a fair mermaid,\n With a comb and a glass in her hand.\n _Chorus._ And the raging winds do blow, blow, blow,\n And the raging winds do blow;\n And we poor sailors climbing up aloft,\n And the land lubbers lying down below.\n\n Then up spoke the boy of our gallant ship\n And a well-spoken boy was he:\n \u201cI\u2019ve a mother and father in London town,\n And this night they will weep for me.\u201d\n\n Then up spoke the captain of our gallant ship,\n And a well-spoken man was he:\n \u201cI\u2019ve a wife who is living in Liverpool town,\n A wife whom I never shall see.\u201d\n\n \u201cMy wife who is living in Liverpool town\n This night will be looking for me;\n She may look till the sun no more goes down,\n She may look to the bottom of the sea.\u201d\n\n Then three times around went our gallant ship,\n And three times around went she;\n And three times around was the end of her trip,\n When she sank to the bottom of the sea.\n\n-----\n\n[3] There may be a few readers to whom it is necessary to point out that\nthis first ballad of the \u201cMermaid\u201d is an old song, here used as\nintroduction to a second by me, which is of the same nature.\n\n\n\n\n THE MERMAN\n\n\n Then another man said when that song was sung:\n There are men like you and me,\n Who will sometimes come ashore and get sprung,\n Yet who live at the bottom of the sea.\n\n For I myself knew one of that folk\n (I believe he still lives and thrives),\n And I\u2019ll tell you the truth without any joke\n How we saved one another\u2019s blest lives.\n\n I was walking one night in New York town,\n And the moon shone bright and clear,\n When I thought I heard a singular sound\n That came from a board-yard near.\n\n First was a groan of misery,\n And then a scythe of pain;\n And a voice which wailed: \u201cOh where is the Sea?\n Which I never shall see again?\u201d\n\n And I thought that party must be cracked,\n Or a little over the bay;\n Because the water was not, in fact,\n A half of a mile away.\n\n So I looked that sufferin\u2019 mortal up,\n And found, sufficiently soon,\n A man who looked like a perishin\u2019 pup,\n As he lay in the light of the moon.\n\n And I said to him, \u201cMatey, just confess\n What all of this row\u2019s about,\n And what was it got you into this mess,\n And how can I get you out?\u201d\n\n Then this man he opened his eyes so wide:\n \u201cNo more do I ask of thee\n Than to carry me down to the water\u2019s side,\n And chuck me right into the sea.\u201d\n\n And I says, \u201c\u2019Tis a singular thing to ask,\n But I think it can be no sin,\n And anyhow \u2019tis an easy task\n To carry and pitch you in.\u201d\n\n So I picked that perishin\u2019 person up,\n And slewed him on my back,\n And he wriggled and moved with many a flup\n Like a codfish or a jack.\n\n But when I had carried him half the way,\n He seemed to be half-way done,\n And when we had got \u2019longside of the bay,\n I guessed that his life was gone.\n\n But when he heard the water splash,\n He opened his eyes\u2014you bet!\n And said: \u201cIf you only will make a dash\u2014\n Good Lord! there\u2019s a chance for me yet!\u201d\n\n And when we came to the water\u2019s edge,\n I never a word did say,\n But carried him right to the end of the Ledge,\n And dumped him into the Bay.\n\n And then he gin a yell of delight,\n And then he warbled a tune,\n As he swam about in the water bright,\n All there in the light of the moon.\n\n And he hollered to me his partin\u2019 thanks,\n And said: \u201cI am outer my pain;\n Good-bye! I\u2019m off for the \u2019Foundland Banks;\n Some day we shall meet again.\u201d\n\n Now when a year had passed I found\n Myself in a Southern sea,\n A-wrecked; for all on board were drowned,\n And nobody saved but me.\n\n And as I sat upon the turf,\n And looked at the water blue,\n A man came walking out of the surf,\n And says to me: \u201cHow do you do?\n\n \u201cI think you don\u2019t remember me,\n Allow me to let you know\n I\u2019m the fellow that you threw into the sea\u2014\n In New York\u2014a year ago.\n\n \u201cMy home is down in the Ocean deep,\n And sometimes\u2014would you think?\n I go ashore when men are asleep\n To a tavern to take a drink.\n\n \u201cMy mother was a mermaid fair,\n She lived down in the sea;\n And my father he was a Dutch sail\u00f3r,\n So it came that I am what I be.\n\n \u201cAnd I can walk about on land\n Until my clothes are dry,\n But that brings up to the end of my sand,\n For then I must surely die:\n\n \u201cAnd my soul sail off for Doldrum Isle,\n Unless some one pities my pain,\n And carries me down where the waters bile,\n And puts me in \u2019em again.\n\n \u201cOne turn deserves another, ahoy!\n And John must settle with Jack;\n You treated me like a brother, old boy\n And now I will pay you back.\n\n \u201cIn this bag there is more than a thousand pound,\n And I give it all to you:\n In a Spanish galloon that money I found,\n (It\u2019s a thing which I frequently do).\n\n \u201cBut in this place you\u2019d be sure to spile,\n So now I will give you a tip:\n Just walk to the other side of this isle,\n And there you will find a ship.\n\n \u201cYou\u2019ll find her there as sure as you\u2019re born;\n Her name is the _Clara Belle_,\n She sails for Havanna in the morn,\n So, matey\u2014fare-you-well!\n\n \u201cFarewell\u2014for here I cannot bide.\u201d\n He turned his back to the shore,\n And walked right into the risin\u2019 tide,\n And I never beheld him more.\n\n So we never should doubt of a mystery,\n There are lots of \u2019em round us still;\n For nobody knows what\u2019s down in the sea,\n And nobody ever will.\n\n Said Brown, \u201cThat story now goes home to me.\n Folks say a witch, a wizard, and a Finn,\n Are all jint partners in all deviltry,\n The Devil himself of course bein\u2019 counted in;\n And of these Northern conjurers I can sing\n A song if you will join me in the chorus.\n First take your drinks\u2014that is the prudent thing,\n We never know in life what lies before us.\u201d\n Which having done, himself he did begin\n The wondrous ballad of the \u201cWizard Finn.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE WIZARD FINN\n\n\n As I suppose, you all have heard\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board,\n I can tell you that is so.\n I\u2019ve sailed with one and I ought to know:\n For it is true, upon my word,\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n Eric Jansen was his name,\n And from Christi\u00e1n\u2019 he came;\n A seemly man all for to see,\n But devil a bit the man for me:\n For it is true, as all have heard,\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n From the hour he joined the ship,\n All went wrong in all the trip;\n \u2019Twas nothing but swear and growl and groan,\n And the weather was just the devil\u2019s own:\n You may reckon it all absurd,\n But there\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n Our grub was spoiled from that first hour,\n Except the vinegar all was sour;\n All you heard was Lubber! and Liar!\n And everything hot except the fire:\n For it is true, as all accord,\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n For as the doctors all do know,\n A Finn has fins between each toe:\n He is web-footed like a duck;\n Which is the cause of his bad luck:\n For it is true, as I averred,\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n And when at last it got so bad,\n That master and men were nigh gone mad,\n A rummerin\u2019 whisper did begin\n That \u2019twas all along of this here Finn:\n For it is true, and on re-c\u00f3rd\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n And the long and short of this debate\n Was that one night our second mate,\n Bein\u2019 as mad as a man might be,\n Pitched Eric Jansen into the sea:\n For it is true, unless I\u2019ve erred,\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n When all at once around there came\n Over the sea a greenish flame,\n And the biggest whale I ever spied,\n Rose up by Eric Jansen\u2019s side:\n For it is true, as you may\u2019ve inferred,\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n And the Finn he got upon the whale,\n And off in the flame we saw them sail;\n Hearing a song as they fell behind,\n Like women singing with the wind:\n For it is true, as all have concurred,\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n Off from the ship and off the shore,\n And Eric Jansen we saw no more;\n But from that hour, aboard that ship,\n All went well for the rest of the trip:\n For it is true, upon my word,\n As you and I have often heard,\n People may say it\u2019s all absurd,\n And yet it holds as I averred,\n And bein\u2019 a fact it\u2019s on rec\u00f3rd,\n Unless the best of men have erred,\n As you may truly have inferred,\n In which observers have concurred:\n There\u2019s no good luck with a Finn on board.\n\n \u201cThat story of the Finn,\u201d said one to Brown,\n \u201cIs of the kind which hev been salted down,\n Which is the reason, I suppose, why you\n Take such a lot of pains to prove it\u2019s true.\n When tales are c\u2019rect in all their fitnesses,\n There ain\u2019t no need of forty witnesses,\n Nor one at all I guess, but that\u2019s enough;\n Now listen to the song of \u2018Charley Buff,\u2019\n Who always said, \u2018I am a truthful man:\u2019\u201d\n He polished off his drink and thus began:\n\n\n\n\n CHARLEY BUFF\n\n\n Oh Charley Buff was his parents\u2019 joy,\n And as he always told,\n He went to sea as a cabin-boy\n Before he was one year old.\n\n _Chorus._ Now this is pretty bad,\n But it\u2019s nothin\u2019 to what\u2019s a-coming:\n Yet Charley he was a truthful lad,\n And never indulged in humming.\n\n And this Charley Buff allays said to me:\n \u201cTo lie I cannot afford,\n For you know I hev got more truth in me\n Than all of the rest on board.\n\n \u201cI have seen in the isle of Barriboo\n Such high-sized coco-nuts,\n That the natives used to split \u2019em in two\n And use \u2019em to make their huts.\n\n \u201cI hev seen the Kanaka women\n Foller a ship\u2019n full sail,\n A thousand miles a-swimmin\u2019\n For a bottle or a tenpenny nail.\n\n \u201cI hev seen the eggs of the toodly-wang;\n It\u2019s a bird in the Muldive Isles;\n And when they hatch they burst with a bang\n You can hear five hundred miles.\n\n \u201cFrom a Cariboo king named Jocko,\n A man of cheerful life,\n For only a fid of tobacco\n I bought me a beautiful wife.\n\n \u201cOne night she was gone, by gum!\n But as soon as ever I missed her,\n From the king for a glass of rum\n I bought her younger sister.\n\n \u201cOne evening for their tea\n Her family broiled and ate her;\n \u2018Never mind!\u2019 says the king to me,\n \u2018Just go and pick out a better.\u2019\u201d\n\n _Chorus._ Now this is pretty bad,\n Yet it\u2019s nothin\u2019 to what\u2019s a-coming;\n But I hear the old man a bawlin\u2019 like mad,\n So I guess I will stop my humming.\n\n \u201cWal,\u201d answered Brown, \u201cthat comes it rather strong.\n Now if you like I\u2019ll sing a pirate\u2019s song\n Of which you all have heard at times a bit;\n I\u2019ve jined \u2019em into one to make \u2019em fit,\n Like beads upon a string, altho\u2019 I fear\n It\u2019s partly pirate and part mutineer.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n BOLD ROBIN ROVER\n\n\n Bold Robin Rover\n Said to his crew:\n \u201cUp with the black flag\n And down with the blue!\n Up with the Black Boy!\n All men to show,\n Over the water\n And off let us go!\u201d\n\n A man-of-war he hailed us:\n \u201cCome under my lee!\u201d\n \u201cSee you damned,\u201d said the pirate,\n \u201cFor I\u2019d rather sink at sea,\n In the blue water\n Far out and free,\n Cruising down on the shore\n By the coast of Barbary.\u201d\n\n We met the _Flying Dutchman_,\n By midnight he came,\n His hull was all of hell fire,\n His sails were all o\u2019 flame;\n Fire on the main-top,\n Fire on the bow,\n Fire on the gun-deck,\n Fire down below!\n\n Four-and-twenty dead men,\n Those were the crew,\n The devil on the bowsprit\n Fiddled as she flew.\n\n We gave her a broadside\n Right in the dip,\n Just like a candle,\n Out went the ship.\n\n We met a gallant vessel\n A-sailing on the sea,\n For mercy, for mercy,\n For mercy, she did plea;\n But the mercy we gave her\n We sunk her in the sea;\n Cruising down on the shore\n By the coast of Barbary,\n\n Four-and-twenty Spaniards,\n Mighty men of rank,\n With their golden ladies\n Had to walk the plank,\n Over the gunwale\n Into the sea,\n Cruising down on the shore,\n By the coast of Barbary.\n\n Oh devil take the captain!\n And devil take the ship!\n And devil take the cargo!\n And devil take the trip!\n And devil take the bo\u2019su\u2019n!\n And devil take his call!\n And devil take the doctor!\n And devil take \u2019em all!\n\n Over the quarter,\n Over the sail,\n Into the water,\n Dead as a nail,\n Slung like a biscuit,\n Hot as a coal,\n Where the sharks may take the body,\n And the devil take the soul!\n\n Then spoke Grim Sam of Jersey, \u201cAs we\u2019ve heard\n A mermaid or a witch is the same bird,\n But of a different feather, so a pirate,\n And slaver, is all one for guards to fire at,\n For pirates kill and plunder all they catch,\n And slavers at the same are just their match;\n There ain\u2019t no special difference\u201d (it was said\n That Sam himself well knew the Guinea trade,\n And half-way to the devil had sent his soul\n By running into Cuba \u201csacks of coal\u201d)\u2014\n And then he sang to us right merrily\n A slaver\u2019s song, which was not writ by me.\n\n\n\n\n TIME FOR US TO GO\n\n\n With sails let fall and sheeted home, and clear of the ground were we,\n We passed the bank, stood round the light, and sailed away to sea;\n The wind was fair and the coast was clear, and the brig was noways\n slow,\n For she was built in Baltimore, and \u2019twas time for us to go.\n Time for us to go,\n Time for us to go,\n For she was built in Baltimore, and \u2019twas time for us to go.\n\n A quick run to the West we had, and when we made the Bight,\n We kept the offing all day long, and crossed the bar at night.\n Six hundred niggers in the hold, and seventy we did stow,\n And when we\u2019d clapped the hatches on, \u2019twas time for us to go.\n\n We hadn\u2019t been three days at sea before we saw a sail,\n So we clapped on every inch she\u2019d stand, although it blew a gale,\n And we walked along full fourteen knots, for the barkie she did know,\n As well as ever a soul on board, \u2019twas time for us to go.\n\n We carried away the royal yards, and the stun\u2019sle boom was gone,\n Says the skipper, \u201cThey may go or stand; I\u2019m darned if I don\u2019t crook\n on.\n So the weather braces we\u2019ll round in, and the trys\u2019le set also,\n And we\u2019ll keep the brig three p\u2019ints away, for it\u2019s time for us to\n go.\u201d\n\n Oh yard-arm under she did plunge in the trough of the deep seas,\n And her masts they thrashed about like whips as she bowled before the\n breeze,\n And every yard did buckle up like to a bending bow,\n But her spars were tough as whalebone, and \u2019twas time for us to go.\n\n We dropped the cruiser in the night, and our cargo landed we,\n And ashore we went, with our pockets full of dollars, on the spree.\n And when the liquor it is out, and the locker it is low,\n Then to sea again, in the ebony trade, \u2019twill be time for us to go.\n Time for us to go,\n Time for us to go,\n Then to sea again, in the ebony trade, \u2019twill be time for us to go.\n\n \u201cWall,\u201d said Mose Brown, \u201cI \u2019low that that escape\n From the derned cruiser was a blame close shave,\n And I myself once in as bad a scrape\n Was lifted out by one big thumping wave\n On the same line of coast\u2014or thereabout,\n Since it was off the Bight\u2014that\u2019s old Benin\u2014\n Where as the sayin\u2019 is, \u2018but one goes out\n Of all a hundred strangers who go in.\u2019\n It ain\u2019t so healthy quite\u2014to be exact\u2014\n As \u2019tis in Colorado high and dry,\n Where they send invalids\u2014it is a fact\u2014\n Off to some other country for to die;\n Excuse me, gents, for keepin\u2019 you so long,\n Now I\u2019ll proceed to let you hev my song.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n ROLLING OVER[4]\n\n\n It was upon a Boston brig, and that was in the Fall,\n Our barky she was light as a gig, for our lading was but small;\n And it was in the American War as we were sailing thus,\n When we saw a steamer from afar, and knew she was after us.\n _Chorus._ Rolling over, rolling over, rolling on.\n The roaring waves they came,\n Like water into fire all gone,\n For the sea was all of a flame.\n\n Now I have often seen by dark the sea a-burning bright,\n But nothing did I yet remark like what it was that night,\n And the wake we left behind us as we sailed for many an hour,\n Was like a fiery serpent who was chasing to devour.\n\n And then the captain made a speech to us a-standing round,\n And said: \u201c\u2019Fore I\u2019ll be taken I\u2019ll be damned if I don\u2019t be drowned;\n Yet if you will be plucky, men, and likewise well behaved,\n We\u2019ve got one chance in a thousand yet, but what we may be saved.\n\n \u201cAbout ten miles to leeward there lies the Guinea land,\n And for fifty miles before it clear a narrow bar of sand;\n And if we find a deepish place\u2014as such of them there are\u2014\n It just is barely possible that we may clear the bar.\u201d\n\n Then we gave three cheers for our old man because we liked his dash,\n And allowed ere we\u2019d go to prison that we all would go to smash;\n So then we set the wheel up with the steamer coming down,\n And never a man did care a damn if he was going to drown.\n\n Now as we came unto the bar I happened to remark\n A spot among the waves on which the water it was dark;\n And I showed it to the captain, who saw the place was fit,\n And hollered to the helmsman to steer her straight for it.\n\n Now just as we were working to this very closest shave,\n There came by Heaven\u2019s mercy a tremendous booming wave,\n Which gave the barky such a lift, thanks to our lucky star,\n That though we felt the bottom scrape\u2014by God we crossed the bar!\n\n And as we came in the still water we gave three roaring cheers,\n For the rebel he was locked outside\u2014of him we had no fears;\n But I never shall forget until I come unto my grave,\n How we were saved on the Guinea coast by the sea-light and the wave.\n _Chorus._ Rolling over, rolling over, rolling on.\n The roaring waves they came,\n Like water into fire all gone,\n For the sea was all of a flame.\n\n Quoth Nat of Stonington, \u201cThat _is_ a bruiser,\n And yet I know darn\u2019d well it could be done\n With the third wave\u2014but talking of a cruiser,\n I know a song\u2014\u2019tis just a little one\u2014\n But first I would observe that a _muskeeter_\n Is not an insect, for as you should know\n The term\u2019s applied unto a different creeter,\n Which sails about the Gulf of Mexico.\n Sometimes the thing is called a _guard-accoster_,[5]\n And when one did accost us with a gun,\n Out of the way we ginerally tost her;\n It ain\u2019t hard work to make a greaser run.\n Well, that\u2019ll do. We got a song before us,\n And them as likes may holler in the chorus.\u201d\n\n-----\n\n[4] This ballad was very much revised, corrected, turned over, and\nre-turned, by sundry old sailors, chief among whom was the ancient\nmariner, Captain Stead. Almost the same could be said of all these\nsongs, but this one was specially \u201ccut up and salted down for sea use.\u201d\n\n[5] _Guarda Costa._\n\n\n\n\n THE MUSQUITO\n\n\n Said Paul unto Peter,\n \u201cI see a muskeeter,\n The boat\u2019s coming over the bay.\u201d\n Said Peter to Paul,\n \u201cShe is saucy, though small,\n And the captain is sailing away.\u201d\n\n Said Paul unto Peter,\n \u201cConfound the old creetur,\n The boat\u2019s coming over the bay.\u201d\n Said Peter to Paul,\n \u201cWe will soon make her squall,\n And the captain is sailing away.\u201d\n\n Said Paul unto Peter,\n \u201cWe\u2019ll bang her and beat her!\n The boat\u2019s coming over the bay.\u201d\n Said Peter to Paul,\n \u201cSet stun\u2019sles and all,\n And the captain is sailing away.\u201d\n\n Said Paul unto Peter,\n \u201cWe\u2019ll give her short metre,\n The boat\u2019s coming over the bay.\u201d\n Said Peter to Paul,\n \u201cGive her powder and ball,\n And the captain is sailing away.\u201d\n\n Said Paul unto Peter,\n \u201cWe\u2019ll roast her and eat her,\n The boat\u2019s coming over the bay.\u201d\n Said Peter to Paul,\n \u201cWe will gobble them all,\n And the captain is sailing away!\u201d\n\n \u201cNow, \u2019fore we fairly get into the Gulf,\u201d\n Said Saltonstall, \u201cand fall into its tide,\n Which swallows up so many like a wolf,\n I\u2019ll sing a song about a place outside,\n Where a thing once took place which was a wonder\u2014\n I mean the story of \u2018Old Stand from Under.\u2019\u201d\n\n\n\n\n STAND FROM UNDER!\n\n\n I was sailing in a vessel a long time ago,\n All the while dead against us the wind used to blow,\n And it seemed as if aboard us that nothing would go right,\n When over the Bahamas a-sailing by the night.\n _Chorus._ By the night, by the night,\n When over the Bahamas a-sailing by the night.\n\n In the dark, up in the rigging, or somewhere on high,\n \u201cHallo! Stand from under!\u201d a voice used to cry;\n But the Being who hallooed it was always out of sight,\n When over the Bahamas a-sailing by the night.\n\n On that gloomy haunted vessel, and all among her crew,\n Was a dark and silent sailor whom no one ever knew;\n And the Voice it called the loudest when that seaman came to light,\n When over the Bahamas a-sailing by the night.\n\n And we said to him one midnight when we heard it worst of all,\n \u201cYour friend there in the rigging is giving you a call.\u201d\n Then he looked up above him with such bitterness and spite,\n When over the Bahama Isles a-sailing by the night.\n\n When the Voice with \u201cStand from under!\u201d once again to him salamed,\n He hallooed back like thunder: \u201cLet go then and be damned!\u201d\n Like a man in desperation who expects a cruel fight,\n All over the Bahamas a-sailing by the night.\n\n And as the word was spoken\u2014like coming to a beck\u2014\n A something came a-whizzing and fell down upon the deck,\n And the body of a mariner was there before our sight,\n All over the Bahama Isles a-sailing by the night.\n\n And looking at the dead man, he said: \u201cI do declare!\n An hour\u2019s sail from Cuba I stabbed that fellow there.\n And now he always haunts me, though I killed him fair, in fight,\n All over the Bahama Isles a-sailing by the night.\u201d\n\n \u201cBut the devil a bit of fear have I of dead or living men,\n I\u2019ve lifted him before and I can lift him up again,\n And pitch him in the water, and sink him out of sight,\n All over the Bahamas a-sailing by the night.\u201d\n\n He grappled with the dead man in spite of all our cries,\n When life and awful anger came in the corpse\u2019s eyes;\n It tore him to the toffrail and held him deadly tight,\n All over the Bahama Isles a-sailing by the night.\n\n And overboard together in a grapple went the two,\n And downward sunk before us into the water blue;\n But in and all around them shone a corpo-santo light,\n All over the Bahama Isles a-sailing by the night.\n\n But from that very minute the wind blew well and fair,\n And everything went right with us when we had lost the pair;\n But I always shall remember while I live that awful sight,\n All over the Bahama Isles a-sailing by the night.\n\n \u201cNow that we\u2019re gittin\u2019 t\u2019wards the Spanish Strand,\u201d\n Said Moses Brown, a-waving his bandana,\n \u201cI just propose that first of all I land\u2014\n As all of us have done\u2014at the old Havanna.\n Adventures there do gin\u2019rally abound,\n The natives being all sus-ceptive creeters;\n For if romance upon this airth is found,\n It sartinly _is_ \u2019mong the senoritas.\n Though he who of \u2019em would advantage take,\n Must be on hand and al\u2019ays wide awake:\n _Quien el diablo ha de enga\u00f1ar_\n _Ma\u00f1ana ha bien de levantar_.\u201d\n Meanin\u2019 that \u201cwho the devil would deceive,\n Must rise uncommon early,\u201d I believe.\n That is the precious time to pick a salad,\n As happened to the fellow in my ballad;\n Who carried off the booty, as the Fox\n Took the fair Hen from the two fighting Cocks.\n\n\n\n\n NEAR HAVANNA\n\n\n It was down near Havanna town, ho!\n It was down near Havanna town, low,\n That I saw a mortal fight,\n At the coming on of night,\n By the starlight a long time ago.\n\n Two Spaniards were a-fighting for their lives,\n The blades flashed like lightning up and down;\n To the click and the clock of the knives,\n And _there_ stood a lady looking on.\n\n I asked her the cause of the fray,\n And she answered in Spanish: \u201cOh see!\n They are villains who carried me away,\n And now they are fighting for me.\u201d\n\n And I said as I looked at her face\n That I hardly could blame such a theft,\n \u201cBut I\u2019ll wait until one gets his grace,\n Then I\u2019ll tackle with the other who is left.\u201d\n\n But just as I spoke, with a start,\n The two leapt and fell on the sand,\n For both had been stabbed to the heart\n And each had his death out of hand.\n\n So I and the _donna_ were friends,\n And that of the kindest and best;\n Now here this true history ends,\n And you must imagine the rest.\n\n And \u2019twas all near Havanna town, ho!\n It was down by Havanna town, low,\n That I saw this mortal fight,\n At the coming on of night,\n By the starlight a long time ago.\n\n There sat a stranger there whom no one knew,\n Who did not seem a follower of the sea,\n And yet no stranger surely to the Blue,\n Who now politely spoke the company,\n Saying unto them: \u201cMates, \u2019tween you and me,\n I put it as a question\u2014don\u2019t you think\n That it is pretty near time to take a drink?\n And if you do belong to Gideon\u2019s Band,\n Then here\u2019s my purse to pay\u2014and here\u2019s my hand\u201d\u2014\n There was a roar of laughter loud and long,\n And then the stranger burst into a song;\n But for a minute were they all so gay,\n For with the words their laughter died away.\n\n\n\n\n THE THREE DEAD MEN\n _Los tres Muertos_\n\n\n Ever so far and far away,\n Down in the hollow by the bay,\n Where the beach is dry and the rocks are high,\n Under the sand three dead men lie.\n There they lie alow, low, low,\n Nor hear the cockrel\u2019s crow.\n Where the palm-trees are a-growing, and the wind is ever blowing,\n There they lie alow, low, low.\n\n One was drowned in yonder sea,\n One was shot as it may be,\n One was left on the beach to die,\n But all in the hollow sleeping lie.\n There they lie alow, low, low,\n Nor wake at the cockrel\u2019s crow.\n Where the palm-trees are a-growing, and the wind is ever blowing,\n There they lie alow, low, low.\n\n Sometimes when the moon is bright\n You can see the three, like gulls in flight,\n Flitting along above the waves,\n Or sitting and talking on their graves,\n Where they lie alow, low, low,\n Nor hear the cockrel\u2019s crow.\n Where the palm-trees are a-growing, and the wind is ever blowing,\n There they lie alow, low, low.\n\n There was a pause\u2014when some one merrily\n Struck up a song which all have known of old;\n How Billy Taylor\u2019s sweetheart went to sea,\n And how she fought in an engagement bold:\n And as the talk ran on of female sailors\n Who\u2019ve gone to sea in men-of-war, or whalers,\n Until I spoke and said: \u201cI know a lay\n About a Spanish lady, old lang syne,\n Who, as a sailor, wished to sail away\u2014\n The words are by another and not mine:\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE LADY-SAILOR[6]\n\n\n I\u2019ll go in yon boat, my mother,\n Oh yes! in yon boat I\u2019ll go;\n I\u2019ll go with the mariner, mother,\n And I\u2019ll be a mariner too.\n _Ay, ay, ay, verdadero,_\n _Ay, ay, con el marinero!_\n And I\u2019ll be a mariner too!\n\n Mother, there\u2019s no refusing,\n What true love demands I must do;\n In love there\u2019s no picking and choosing,\n So I\u2019ll be a mariner too.\n _Ay, ay, verdadero,_\n _Ay, ay, con el marinero_,\n And I\u2019ll be a mariner too!\n\n \u201cI like those Spanish songs,\u201d the stranger said:\n \u201cMany I\u2019ve heard and many I have read,\n And if you like I\u2019ll give you one in rhyme,\n By Gil Vincente of the oldest time,\n Which holds its own, and bravely, one may say,\n For Spanish sailors sing it to this day.\u201d\n\n-----\n\n[6]\n\n Irme quiero, madre,\n En aquella galera\n Con el marinero\n Por ser marinera.\n\n\n\n\n THE SPANISH SAILOR\u2019S SONG\n\n\n If you\u2019re sleeping, my dear,\n Wake and open to me!\n For the hour is at hand\n When afar we must flee.\n\n If your white feet are bare\n Still no longer delay;\n For deep are the waters\n Which roll in our way.\n\n The waters so deep\n Of the Guadalquiv\u00edr;\n The hour is at hand,\n We must wander, my dear.[7]\n\n \u2019Tis strange, he added, how our land, in truth,\n As it goes Southward seems to turn to youth,\n And with a softer sun all words are sung\u2014\n As things are warmed\u2014into the Spanish tongue:\n I\u2019ve given you a song, let\u2019s have another;\n \u201cWell, I know one,\u201d I said, \u201cwhich seems its brother,\n Although, compared to yours, it\u2019s nearer zero,\n In Spanish, _Digas tu el marinero!_\u201d\n\n-----\n\n[7]\n\n Si dormis, don\u00e7ella,\n Despertad y abrid,\n Que venida es la hora,\n Si quereis partir.\n\n Si descalza estais\n No querais calzar,\n Que muchas las aquas\n Teneis de pasar\u2014\n\n Las aguas tan hondas\n De Guadalquiv\u00edr;\n Que venida es la hora\n Si teneis partir.\n\n\n\n\n THE LOVER TO THE SAILOR\n\n\n Now tell me this, my sailor boy,\n As sure as you love your wine,\n Oh did you ever see a ship\n As trim as that girl of mine?\n\n And you who\u2019ve been in many a gale,\n And stood on many a deck;\n Oh did you ever see a sail\n As white as my true love\u2019s neck?\n\n And you who have been where the red rose blows\n In many a Southern place,\n Oh did you ever see a rose\n Like those in my sweetheart\u2019s face?\n\n Here\u2019s a cheer for the women with jet black curls,\n Of Spain or of Portugal!\n And seven for the Yankee and English girls,\n The prettiest of them all!\n\n \u201cWall now,\u201d cried Jones, \u201cI railly must admit,\n Them Spanish songs of yourn hev taste and wit;\n But as I\u2019m gettin\u2019 hungry, what is upper\n In me just now is that I want my supper;\n And while it\u2019s cookin\u2019, till they bring the tub,\n I\u2019ll sing you how a sailor lost his grub.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n GREEN CORN AND POTATOES\n\n\n Oh I once was in love like a sinner,\n And the girl she was hahn\u2019some and tall,\n She said she would cook me a dinner\n Of corn and potatoes and all.\n\n In a pot she put ham and potatoes,\n One chicken, and that not too small;\n With gumbos and good red tomatoes,\n And beans and some oysters and all.\n\n On a rock by the river she cooked it,\n When there came up a devil of a squall;\n And into the water it hooked it,\n With the corn and potatoes and all.\n\n The ham and the beans and potatoes\n All went in that devil of a squall,\n With the chicken and big red tomatoes,\n And carrots and oysters and all.\n\n Then hurrah, boys! Hurrah for the Union!\n And the banner which waves from the wall;\n Likewise for the parsnip and onion,\n Green corn and potatoes and all!\n\n The gumbos, the greens, and the carrots\u2014\n Likewise for the monkeys and parrots,\n And corn and potatoes and all!\n\n Here John of Baltimore spoke out: said he\u2014\n \u201cMates, you must know I\u2019m goin\u2019 to leave the sea;\n I\u2019ve had a fortune left me, as I learn,\n So now I guess I give the land a turn.\n I am not one who a sea-life belittles,\n But do confess I cannot stand the vittles:\n You may correct me if you think I\u2019m wrong;\n But first I\u2019ll give my sentiments in song:\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE SAILOR\u2019S FAREWELL\n\n\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n For I am going home,\n To keep me warm and dry,\n No more on the seas to roam.\n\n Roast beef and turkey free,\n And likewise chicken-pie,\n Salt junk\u2014farewell to thee!\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n I\u2019m going to the land\n Where ham and eggs they fry;\n Veal cutlets are on hand;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n Roast duck doth there abound,\n And mince and apple-pie\n In stacks is lyin\u2019 round;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n I smell the rich roast goose,\n A second slice I\u2019ll try;\n A third I shan\u2019t refuse;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n Planked shad is very fine;\n I\u2019m in for living high,\n On terrapins with wine;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n I seek my native soil,\n For soft-shell crabs I sigh,\n And oysters on the broil;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n Unto the canvas-back\n Myself I will apply,\n And hickory nuts I\u2019ll crack;\n Of chinquapins no lack;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n The buckwheat-cake shall boom,\n The Jersey sausage fry;\n Amid green corn I\u2019ll bloom,\n And hominy consume;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n I see the cranberry sauce,\n All with my mental eye;\n Plum-pudding I will boss;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n Venison on chafing-dish,\n With jelly, by the bye,\n Coffee and fresh cat-fish;\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n I\u2019ll soon be on the strand\n Where luscious reed birds fly;\n My own\u2014my Maryland\u2014\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n Old Ocean with thy foam,\n For thee no more I sigh;\n For I am going home!\n Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!\n\n \u201cThat bill o\u2019 fare,\u201d cried Abner Chapin, loud,\n \u201cIs pitched too high for this here Northern crowd:\n New England rum, I spose, seems rather meek\n \u2019Longside peach-brandy down in Chesapeake.\n I don\u2019t de-cry your vittles, by no means,\n But I prefer a pot of pork and beans\n To all the canvas-backs that ever flew,\n With soft-shell crabs and reed birds thereunto.\n And all burnt offerins of fries of lambs\n Ain\u2019t worth a dish of good Rhode Island clams;\n And all your Spanish mackerel, my man,\n Worth one good mackerel caught off Cape Ann!\u201d\n \u201cTalkin\u2019 of mackerel\u201d\u2014Here Peter Young\n Broke off this sermon with the \u201cMackerel Song.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n MACKEREL SIGNS\n\n\n Mackerel clouds and mares\u2019 tails\n A-sailing, a-trailing,\n Make lofty ships carry low sails\n A-sailing, a-trailing away.\n\n When the mack\u2019rel are in the sky,\n A-sailing, a-trailing;\n Soon the wind will be blowing high:\n A-sailing and trailing away.\n\n When the mack\u2019rel shine in the moon,\n A-sailing, a-trailing;\n Then the wind will begin to tune:\n A-sailing, a-trailing away.\n\n Of all the wind upon the seas,\n A-sailing, a-trailing;\n The best is an evening mackerel breeze:\n A-sailing and trailing away.\n\n \u201cA mackerel is a sailor-dish,\u201d\n Said Jones, \u201cfor \u2019tis a sailor fish,\n All drest, like us, in white and blue,\n Which I do call the prettiest hue\n Which the great heaven has to show\n Of all the colours in the bow:\n So, if you please, I\u2019ll sing to you\n A little song about the Blue!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n TRUE BLUE\n\n\n Blue is the sea we sail on,\n And blue is the sky above,\n And blue are the eyes\n As sea or skies\n Of the maiden whom I love:\n And blue is the flag we\u2019re under,\n And blue is the coat I wear;\n But brighter the blue,\n And deeper the hue\n In the eyes which I hold so dear!\n Bluer and brighter and sweeter,\n Fonder and fair and as true;\n Oh it\u2019s blue love and true love for ever!\n And God bless the beautiful blue!\n\n Now supper being over, every man\n Lighted his pipe or called for a cigar,\n Lolled in his chair\u2014and all again began\n To order \u201csomething lively\u201d from the bar.\n Jack Saltonstall, intent on keeping peace,\n Waved a great South Sea club, and said, \u201cI\u2019m sent\n By Providence to act as your police;\u201d\n And at the table sat as President.\n He was a man of pleasing dignity,\n And all allowed he would a captain be,\n Calming all quarrels with a word and wink;\n He had hot rum and lemon for his drink.\n And as he sat in state, with the club of peace\n Which he had taken from the chimney-piece,\n He said to us: \u201cWhat tales this bat could tell\n Of many a battle\u2014many a busted shell,\n And murdered victims by the surfy shore,\n And cani-bally feasts when all was o\u2019er!\u201d\n\n Quoth Sam of Jersey, \u201cI hev seen such things\n Among them natives, ordered by their kings,\n As well might make a common pirate weep,\n And the old devil feel uncommon cheap:\n Such derned, infernal deeds, and parst all showin\u2019,\n Pirates and slavers ain\u2019t the worst folk goin\u2019.\n There\u2019s things to which the worst _they_ do is slow;\n I\u2019ve lived among \u2019em an I ort to know.\n And yet among those natives there are some\n As mild as lambs, and good and humoursome;\n Who never fight no more than an old hen,\n Such difference there is in mortal men.\n I\u2019ll tell you now a tale, to make you sport,\n Of one who chanced among this gentle sort.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE STORY OF SAMUEL JACKSON\n\n\n I\u2019ll tell you of a sailor now, a tale that can\u2019t be beat,\n His name was Samuel Jackson, and his height was seven feet;\n And how this man was shipwrecked in the far Pacific Isles,\n And of the heathen natives with their suppositious[8] wiles.\n\n Now when the others cut the ship, because she was a wreck,\n They left this Samuel Jackson there, a-standin\u2019 on the deck\u2014\n That is, a standin\u2019 on the deck, while sittin\u2019 on the boom;\n They wouldn\u2019t let him in the boat \u2019cos he took up too much room.\n\n When up there came a tilted wave, and like a horse it romped,\n It fell like mountains on the boat, and so the boat was swamped;\n And of those selfish mariners full every one was drowned,\n While Samuel, standing on the deck, beheld it safe and sound.\n\n Now when the sea grew soft and still, and all the gale was o\u2019er,\n Sam Jackson made himself a raft, and paddled safe ashore.\n For fear of fatal accidents\u2014not knowin\u2019 what might come,\n He took a gun and matches, with a prudent cask of rum.\n\n Now this island where he landed proved as merry as a fife,\n For its indigents had ne\u2019er beheld a white man in their life;\n Such incidents as rum and guns they never yet had seen,\n And likewise, in religion, they were awful jolly green.\n\n But they had a dim tradition, from their ancestors, in course,\n Which they had somehow derived from a very ancient source:\n How that a god would come to them, and set the island right;\n And how he should be orful tall, and likewise pearly white.\n\n Now when they saw this Samuel approachin\u2019 on his raft,\n The news through all the island shades was quickly telegrapht,\n How all their tribulations would speedily be past,\n \u2019Cos the long-expected sucker was invadin\u2019 \u2019em at last.\n\n Now when Sam Jackson stept ashore, as modest as you please,\n Nine thousand bloomin\u2019 savages received him on their knees;\n He looked around in wonderment, regardin\u2019 it as odd,\n Not bein\u2019 much accustomed to be worshipped as a god.\n\n But he twigged the situation, and with a pleasin\u2019 smile\n Stretched out his hands, a-blessin\u2019 all the natives of the isle;\n He did it well, although his paws were bigger than a pan,\n Because he was habitual a most politeful man.\n\n So to return their manners, and nary-wise for fun,\n He raised himself with dignity, and then fired off his gun:\n So all allowed that he must be one of the heavenly chaps,\n Since he went about with lightning and dispensed with thunderclaps.\n\n They took him on their shoulders, and he let it go for good,\n And went into their city in the which a temple stood,\n And sot him on the altar, and made him their salams,\n And brought him pleasant coco-nuts, with chickens, po and yams.\n\n And from that day henceforward, in a captivating style,\n He relegated, as he pleased, the natives of that isle;\n And when an unbeliever rose\u2014as now and then were some,\n He cured their irreligion with a little taste of rum.\n\n He settled all their business, and he did it very well,\n So everything went booming like a blessed wedding bell;\n Eleven lovely feminines attended to his wants,\n And a guard of honour followed him to all his usual haunts.\n\n Now what mortal men are made of, that they can\u2019t put up with bliss,\n I do not know, but this I know, that Sam got tired of this;\n He wished that he was far away, again aboard a ship,\n And all he thought of\u2014night and day\u2014was givin\u2019 \u2019em the slip.\n\n And so one night when all was still and every soul asleep,\n He got into a good canoe and paddled o\u2019er the deep,\n But oh the row the natives made, when early in the morn\n They came to worship Samuel, and found their god was gone!\n\n Then Samuel travelled many days, but had the luck at last\n To meet a brig from Boston where he shipped before the mast;\n And he gave it as his sentiments, and no one thought it odd,\n He was better off as sailor than when sailing as a god.\n\n Now many years had flown away when Samuel was forgot,\n There came a ship for pearl shell unto that lonely spot;\n They went into the temple, and what do you suppose\n They found the natives worshipping\u2014a suit of Samuel\u2019s clothes!\n\n And this was the tradition of the people of the soil,\n How once a great divinity had ruled upon their isle;\n Four fathom tall, with eyes like fire, and such was their believin\u2019,\n One night he got upon the moon\u2014and sailed away to Heaven!\n\n \u201cWall, it\u2019s a fact,\u201d cried Doolittle, \u201cI\u2019ll swear\n A rover ain\u2019t contented anywhere;\n But if he is a real sailor slip,\n He\u2019s happiest on the hull\u2014aboard a ship\u2014\n For there at times he has his tallest fun,\n Especially if \u2019tis a dandy one\n Where all is fine\u2014O mateys, that\u2019s the thing!\u201d\n He raised his voice, and thus began to sing:\n (While up and down he merrily did prance)\n Unto the air of _Dance, the Boatman, dance!_\n\n-----\n\n[8]\n\n_Vide_ Appendix.\n\n\n\n\n THE DANDY SHIP\n\n\n We\u2019ve a dandy ship\n And a dandy crew;\n A dandy mate\n And a captain too;\n A dandy doctor\n Who\u2019s a dand\u2019 old sinner,\n And a dandy darkey\n To cook the dinner.\n\n _Chorus._ It\u2019s dance, sailors, dance!\n It\u2019s dance, the sailors, dance!\n We\u2019ll dance all night till the broad daylight,\n And then go to sea in the mornin\u2019!\n\n We\u2019ve a dandy lot\n Of passengers,\n Who live on chicken\n And sassengers;\n A dandy steward\n To steer their mess;\n Likewise a dandy\u2014\n Stew\u2014ard\u2014ess!\n\n _Chorus._ It\u2019s dance, the sailors, dance!\n It\u2019s dance, the sailors, dance!\n We\u2019ll dance all night till the broad daylight,\n And then go to sea in the mornin\u2019!\n\n \u201cShiftin\u2019 and changin\u2019 it is understood,\u201d\n Said Abner Chapin, \u201cnever come to good.\u201d\n \u201cYes,\u201d quoth the Stranger, \u201cthat is very true,\n Who goes for many gets but very few;\n Who travels zigzag makes full many a cross,\n And rolling stones ne\u2019er gather any moss;\n The explanation of which word is funny:\n In common Yiddish Hebrew, _moss_ means money,\n And stones are men\u2014take Peter for a sample\u2014\n Excuse me, friends, I know of an example\n Of a loose fish who changed about so long\n He first became a byword, then a song,\n Which I will sing you though it is distressin\u2019,\n Not that you need it\u2014as a moral lesson.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n JACK OF ALL TRADES\n\n\n In all trades I\u2019ve been a meddler,\n _Chorus._ Foolin\u2019 my life away:\n I started life as a Yankee peddler,\n Fiddlin\u2019 and foolin\u2019 away.\n\n Didn\u2019t find the trade encouragin\u2019\n So I turned a Dey Street New York surgeon.\n\n Next I\u2019d a shopman for employer,\n And then a Philadelphia lawyer.\n\n After that I was a smuggler,\n Then I travelled as a juggler.\n\n Next I was a collector\u2019s dunner,\n And after that an emigrant runner.\n\n Then I laboured with some bakers,\n Next, for a year, I joined the Shakers;\n\n But they found me too defective,\n So for a while I turned detective.\n\n Then I tried my hand as teacher,\n And next became a Blue Light preacher.\n\n Then I was one of the \u2014\u2014\u2019s editors,\n But had to cut to dodge my creditors.\n\n Faking oranges I tried next on,\n Then for a while I dug as a sexton.\n\n For seven trips I was a slaver,\n Then, as a barber, I turned shaver.\n\n After that I worked as pirate,\n For all the naval sharps to fire at.\n\n Then nigger minstrel, then a sorter,\n Off an\u2019 on, shorthand reporter.\n\n Then I took to readin\u2019 lectures,\n And after that to paintin\u2019 pictures.\n\n Next as drummer I did chaffer,\n And then I worked as photogr\u00e1pher.\n\n Then for a while I run a dairy,\n And next I turned apothec\u00e4ry.\n\n Then stuck pla-cards as a billist,\n And so became a patent pill-ist.\n\n Finding all other trades deceiving,\n For a time I took to thieving.\n\n Now I\u2019m a Pacific purser,\n And don\u2019t think I can do any worser,\n Foolin\u2019 my life away.\n\n \u201cYes, that\u2019s the way,\u201d said Jones, \u201cthat some go squandrin\u2019,\n Which minds me that we too must now be wand\u2019rin\u2019:\u201d\n \u201cAnd I,\u201d quoth Brown, \u201cmust be aboard and early;\n But first of all I\u2019m going to see my girley;\n She\u2019d blow a storm if I should fail to meet her:\n She is, I vum, an awful breezy creeter,\n A gale in petticoats, and one that\u2019s stinging;\n I\u2019ll sing a song on that\u2014to end our singing.\n You\u2019ve known the _girl-wind_, boys\u2014I never doubt it;\n And here\u2019s a ballad which is all about it:\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE GIRL-WIND\n\n\n A hurly-burly, hurl-wind\n Is hurrying o\u2019er the waves;\n Before it runs the Girl-wind\n Fresh up from the Ocean caves.\n She\u2019s the little puff who goes before\n To tell of the blow that\u2019s coming,\n She sounds like a hive when winters o\u2019er\n And you hear the bees a-humming.\n\n It\u2019s all very well when a young girl can\n Come tripping along with laughter;\n But not so nice when you see the old man\n With a big stick coming after.\n It\u2019s just the same with Everything\n When pleasure runs before us,\n You drink your wine and think it\u2019s fine:\u2014\n Then comes the tavern scoreus!\n\n So we went forth upon our different ways\u2014\n And these were wide\u2014to many a distant shore:\n I to my home to put in form these lays,\n And think upon this strange wild sailor-lore,\n In which, to him who reads with generous heart,\n As in a museum we seem to see\n The strangest relics gathered far apart\u2014\n Rude, coarse, and rough, yet touched with poetry;\n Like shells and gems and coins of olden time,\n And worthless stones, all hardened in a mass,\n Such as I\u2019ve seen, fished from the ocean\u2019s slime,\n Such are these men and melodies\u2014alas!\n They all are of an age half past away.\n Where is the boatswain now?\u2014who hears his call?\n And where these sailing packets once so gay?\n I to myself do seem traditional\n And all my youth a legend\u2014so to say\u2014\n Yet well or ill I\u2019ve done the best I could\n To make in truthful song a little show\n Of quaint old tales, now little understood,\n Of the North End of Boston\u2014long ago.\n\n\n\n\n L A Y S O F T H E L A N D\n\n\n\n\n THE RISE AND FALL OF GLORYVILLE\n\n\n Where the rockiest Rocky Mountains interview the scornful skies,\n And the sager kinds of sage-bush in the middle distance rise,\n There the cultured eye descending from the dreamlike azure hill,\n Lights in an \u00e6sthetic foreground on the town of Gloryville.\n\n It was in the Middle Ages\u2014\u2019bout the end of Sixty-eight,\n So I found the hoary legend written on an ancient slate\u2014\n That one Ezry Jenks prospecting, when he reached this blooming spot,\n Thus uplifted to his pardner: \u201cGlory! Moses, let us squat!\u201d\n\n Thus rebounded Moses Adams: \u201cGlory was the foremost word\n Which in the untrammelled silence of this wilderness was heard,\n And I arnswer, dimly feelin\u2019 like a prophet, grand and slow,\n \u2018Glory kinder sounds like Money\u2014up to glory let her go!\u2019\u201d\n\n And this casual conversation in the year of Sixty-eight,\n As if by an inspiration he recorded on a slate,\n Which \u2019twas said in later ages\u2014six weeks after\u2014used to hang\n As a curiositary in the principal shebang.\n\n On the spot that very evening they perceived a beauteous gleam\n From a grain of shining metal in a wild auriferous stream:\n As their eyes remarked the symptom thus their tongues responsive\n spoke:\n \u201cIn this undiscovered section there _is_ pay-dirt, sure as smoke!\u201d\n\n Little boots or little shoes it to inform you how, like crows\n To a carcase, folks came flying, and the town of Glory rose;\n As in country schools the urchins cast each one a spittle-ball,\n Till at last a monstrous paper fungus gathers on the wall.\n\n \u2019Long the road they built their cabins, in a vis-a-visual way,\n As if each man to his neighbour kind of wished to have his say;\n But \u2019twas also said that like two rows of teeth the houses grew,\n Threatening uncommon danger to the stranger passing through.\n\n Yes, for like the note of freedom sounded on Hibernia\u2019s harp,\n Every person in the party was a most uncommon sharp;\n And it got to be a saying that from such an ornery cuss\n As a regular Gloryvillin\u2014oh, good Law deliver us!\n\n First of all the pay-dirt vanished or became uncommon rare,\n Then they wandered more than ever to the Cross and from the Square,\n For when all resources failed them nary copper did they mind,\n For they had fine-answering Genius, which is never left behind.\n\n So they got incopperated as a city fair and grand,\n Spreading memoirs of their splendour over many a distant land,\n Mind I say in _distant_ places\u2014people near them knew\n Into what unearthly beauty the great town of Glory grew.\n\n Then they sent an ex-tra Governor over seas and far beyond,\n Even unto distant Holland, loaded up with many a bond,\n Splendidly engraved in London, having just the proper touch\n Quite imposing\u2014rather\u2014for they did impose upon the Dutch.\n\n And with every bond the Governor had a picture to bestow\n Of the town of Gloryville a-bathing in the sunset\u2019s glow;\n This they had performed in Paris by an artist full of cheek,\n Who was told to draw a city _comme il faut dans l\u2019Am\u00e9rique_.\n\n The ideas of this artist were idead from long ago,\n Out of scenery in an opera, \u201cCortez in the Mexico.\u201d\n Therefore all his work expanded with expensive fallacies:\n Castles, towered walls, pavilions, real-estately palaces.\n\n In the foreground lofty palm-trees, as if full of soaring love,\n Bore up coco-nuts and monkeys to the smiling heaven above;\n Jet-black Indian chieftains, at their feet too lovely girls were\n sighin,\n With an elephant beyond them\u2014here and there a casual lion.\n\n You have seen in _Pilgrim\u2019s Progress_ the Celestial City stand\n Like a hub in half a cart-wheel raying light o\u2019er all the land.\n Well, in _that_, it is the felloes of the wheel which cause the blaze;\n So in Gloryville the fellows were the ones who made the rays.\n\n When these views were well matured the Governor went to Amsterdam,\n Where to Mynheer Schmuel Ganef first of all he made his slam:\n At a glance each \u201csaw\u201d the other\u2014at a glance they went aside,\n And without a word of bother soon the plan was cut and dried.\n\n For one hundred thousand dollars then the Governor at will\n Gave away the full fee-simple of the town of Gloryville.\n \u201cDat for you,\u201d said Schmuel Ganef, \u201cis, I dink, not much too much,\n But I makesh de shtock a million ven I sells him to the Dutch.\u201d\n\n And the secret of his selling was upon the artful plan\n Known to the police in Paris as the _vol Am\u00e9ricain_,\n Whereby he who does the spilling manages the man who\u2019s spilt\n Very nicely, for he makes him an accomplice in the guilt.\n\n Even as of old great sages managed the Parisian _fonds_,\n So in Amsterdam Heer Ganef peddled out his Glory bonds;\n And to all he slyly whispered, \u201cI will let you in de first\n On de ground-floor\u2014sell out quickly\u2014for you know de ding may burst.\u201d\n\n Woe to you who live by thieving, though you be of rogues the chief,\n Even the greatest will discover in due time his master-thief.\n True, he \u201clet them in,\u201d and truly on the very bottom floor,\n But was with the Gloryvillins in the cellar long before.\n\n And to tell you how the biters all got bitten were in vain;\n Here the Governor leaves my story, and he comes not in again.\n I will pass to later ages, when all Gloryville, you bet,\n Found itself extreme encumbered with an extra booming debt.\n\n Those who sold the bonds had vanished, those who hadn\u2019t held the town,\n Little knew they of its glory over seas or great renown.\n They had nothing of the fruitage, though, alas! they held the plant,\n Nothing saw they of the picture, save, indeed, the Elephant.\n\n He who had been in the background now came trampling to the fore;\n Terribly he trampled on them, very awful was his roar!\n Very dreadful is the silence when no human voice responds\n To a legal requisition for the interest of our bonds.\n\n But ere long a shrewd reflection unto Moses Adams came\u2014\n \u201cDarned ef I\u2019m a-gwine to suffer fur another party\u2019s game;\n Wings is given to muskeeters\u2014like muskeeters men can fly;\n Ef a strawberry-vine can travel with its roots, then why not I?\u201d\n\n Silently, in secret, Moses to himself a plan reveals,\n Got a three-inch plank and sawed it into surreptitious wheels,\n And when night in solemn mystery had succeeded unto day,\n Put his hut and things on axles, and quite lonely drove away\n\n To a place just over yonder by the old Coyote Road;\n There, no more a man of glory, Moses Adams dropped his load,\n And when resting from his labour and refreshing from his jug,\n Having known a town called Julesberg, called his shanty Splendourbug.\n\n On the following morn as usual in due time arose the sun,\n And the Gloryvillins followed his example one by one;\n While he smiled upon the city, as on other things beneath,\n \u2019Twas observed one snag was wanting in the double row of teeth.\n\n Little said the Left-behinders, but they seemed to take the hint,\n And each man surveyed his neighbour with a shrewd and genial squint;\n All day long there was a sound of sawing timber up and down,\n Seven more houses in the morning were a-wanting in the town.\n\n And before the week departed all the town departed too,\n Just like the swallows in the autumn to another soil they flew;\n Only that, unlike the swallows which we hear of in the song,\n When the Gloryvillins squandered each one took his nest along.\n\n All except one ancient darkey, obstinate and blind and lame,\n Who for want of wheels and credit could not follow up the game;\n So the others had to leave him, which they did without regret,\n Left him there without a copper\u2014just one million deep in debt.\n\n If you seek them you may find them comfortable as in a rug,\n All of them at length established in the town of Splendourbug;\n And the driver to the traveller as by Gloryville he goes,\n Points him out, an ancient darkey who a million dollars owes.\n\n\n\n\n IN THE WRONG BOX\n\n\n When Eagle Davis died,\n I was sittin\u2019 by his side,\n \u2019Twas in Boston, Massachusetts; and he said to me, \u201cOld boy!\n This climate\u2014as you see\u2014\n Isn\u2019t quite the size for me;\n Dead or livin\u2019, take me back if you can to Ellanoy!\u201d\n\n So I took him by the hand,\n But he\u2019d just run out his sand,\n And his breath was gone for ever\u2014before a word would come;\n Then I and other three\n Together did agree\n In a party for to travel and to funeralise him home.\n\n But Goshen Wheeler said,\n As he looked upon the dead,\n Weepin\u2019 mildly, \u201cJust remark my observation what I say:\n That deceased, now glori_ous_,\n Was in life a curious cuss,\n And somethin\u2019 unexpectable will happen on the way.\n\n \u201cFrum the time that he was born\n Till he doubled round the Horn\n Of Death, all his measurements and pleasurements were odd;\n And odd his line will be,\n As you\u2019re registered to see,\n Till his walnut case is underneath the gravel and the sod.\u201d\n\n It was bitter winter weather\n When we all four got together\n At the dep\u00f4t with the coffin in an extra packin\u2019 box;\n And a friend with good intent,\n A cask of whisky sent,\n Just to keep our boats from wrackin\u2019, as they say, upon the rocks.\n\n Then a ticket agent he\n Seein\u2019 mournin\u2019, says to me,\n \u201cCan I get the cards, or help you in your trouble, Mister Brown?\u201d\n So with solemn words I said,\n As I pinted to the dead,\n \u201cThere you\u2019ll find, I guess, our pilgrimage and shrine is written\n down.\u201d\n\n Then all night beneath the stars\n We sat grimly in the cars,\n Sometimes sleepin\u2019, sometimes thinkin\u2019, sometimes drinkin\u2019, till the\n dawn;\n And each man went in his turn\n To the baggage-crate to learn\n If the box was keepin\u2019 time with us, and how \u2019twas gettin\u2019 on.\n\n Then all day beneath the sun\n Still the train went rushin\u2019 on,\n While we still kep\u2019 as silent as grave-stones as we went:\n Playing euchre solemnly,\n Which we kinder did agree\n With the stakes to build for Davis a decent monu_ment_.\n\n \u2019Bout once in every mile\n Some mourner took a smile,\n But we did no other smilin\u2019 as we travelled day or night;\n And once in every hour\n Some one went into the bower,\n And reported the receptacle of Davis was all right.\n\n But when four days were past,\n Which we still were flyin\u2019 fast,\n Goshen Wheeler, very solemn, with expression to us cries,\n \u201cWhere we are it should be freezin\u2019\n And our very breaths a-squeezin\u2019,\n Whereas the air is hot enough to bake persimmon pies.\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t you smell a rich perfume\n As of summer flowers in bloom?\n \u2019Tis magnolias a-peddled by yon humble coloured boy:\n Now, I never yet did know\n That the sweet mag-no-li-o\n Grew in winter in the latitude of Northern Ellanoy.\u201d\n\n Then said Ebenezer Dotton,\n \u201cI behold a field of cotton,\n And I wonder how in thunder such a veg\u2019table got here.\n I don\u2019t know how we\u2019re fixed,\n But the climate\u2019s getting mixed,\n And it\u2019s spilin\u2019 very rapidly with warmness as I fear.\u201d\n\n Spoke Mister Aaron Bland,\n \u201cI perceive on yonder land\n That sugar-cane is bloomin\u2019, correctly, all in rows,\n And not to make allusions\n To Republican delusions,\n But the niggers air a-gettin\u2019 all around as thick as crows.\u201d\n\n Still we sat there mighty glum\n Till along a fellow come.\n And I says, says I, \u201cConductor, now tell us what it means,\n Just inform us where we be?\u201d\n \u201cWall, now, gentlemen,\u201d said he,\n \u201cI reckon we air comin\u2019 to the spot called New Or-le\u00e9ns!\u201d\n\n So we rushed all in a row,\n When we got to the dep\u00f4t,\n To the baggage-crate, a-wonderin\u2019 at these transformation scenes;\n And we found out unexpected\n That the box had been directed\n Not unto Ellanoy, but to a man in New Or-le\u00e9ns!\n\n Without carin\u2019 if I\u2019d catch it,\n I straightway took a hatchet,\n And busted off the cover without openin\u2019 my mouth;\n And found a grand pianner\n Which we\u2019d followed for our banner\n All the way from Massachusetts unto the sunny South!\n\n Then I said, \u201cI rather guess\n I can see into this mess,\n And explain the startlin\u2019 error which has given you such shocks.\n When that Boston fellow, he\n Asked the route I\u2019d take of me,\n I pinted, inadvertional, unto another box.\u201d\n\n Now Eagle Davis lies\n Beneath the Northern skies,\n Where the snow is on the pine-tree while we are with the palm;\n But I reckon if his spirit\n Should ever come to hear it,\n He\u2019ll be perfectly contented with the story in this psalm.\n\n\n\n\n ZION JERSEY BOGGS\n A LEGEND OF PHILADELPHIA\n\n\n Before the telegraphic wires\n Had ever run from pole to pole,\n Or telegirls sent telegrams\n To cheer the weary waiting soul;\n When all things went about as slow\n As terrapins could run on clogs,\n Was played a game\n By one whose name\n Was Mister Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\nA Philadelphia newspaper\n Was printed then on Chestnut Street,\n While \u2019crost the way, just opposite,\n There lived a sufferin\u2019 rival sheet,\n Whose editors could get no news,\n Which made \u2019em cross as starvin\u2019 hogs;\n The first, I guess,\n Had an express\n Which kind o\u2019 b\u2019longed to Mister Boggs.\n\n But in those days the only news\n Which re\u00ebly opened readers\u2019 eyes,\n Was of the New York lottery,\n And who by luck had got a prize.\n All other news, for all they cared,\n Might travel to the orful dogs;\n And this they got\n All piping hot\u2014\n Though surreptitiously\u2014from Boggs.\n\n For of the crew no party knew\n That Boggs did any horses own.\n All sportin\u2019 amputations he\n Did most concussively disown;\n For he had serious subtle aims,\n His wheels were full of secret cogs,\u2014\n Well oiled and slow,\n Yet sure to go,\n Was Mister Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n One mornin\u2019 he, mysteriously,\n An\u2019 smilin\u2019 quite ironical,\n Spoke to the other editor,\n The man who run the _Chronicle:_\n \u201cThe _Ledger_ has a hoss express\n By which your lottery news he flogs.\u201d\n \u201cYes, that is true,\n But what\u2019s to do?\u201d\n Replied the man to Mister Boggs.\n\n Then Mister Boggs let down his brows,\n And with a long deep knowing wink,\n Said, \u201cHosses travel mighty fast,\n But ther air faster things, I think;\n An\u2019 kerrier-pidgings, as you know,\n Kin find their way thro\u2019 storm and fogs:\n Them air the bugs\n To fly like slugs!\u201d\n Said Mister Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n \u201cAnd in my glorious natyve land,\n Which lies acrost the Delaware,\n I hev a lot upon the spot,\u2014\n Just twenty dollars fur a pair.\n These gentle insects air the things\n To make the _Ledger_ squeal like hogs;\n That is the game\n To hit \u2019em lame!\u201d\n Said Mister Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n The editor looked back again,\n And saw him better on his wink.\n \u201cIt is the crisis of our fate\u2014\n Say, Boggs, what is your style of drink?\n Step to the bar of Congress Hall;\u2014\n We\u2019ll try your poultry on, by Gogs!\n An\u2019 let \u2019em fly\n Tarnation high!\u201d\n \u201cAmen!\u201d said Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n The pidgins came, the pidgins flew,\n They lit upon the lofty wall;\n They made their five an\u2019 ninety miles\n In just about no time at all.\n Compared to them, the _Ledger_ team\n Went just as slow as haulin\u2019 logs.\n But all was mum,\n Shut close an\u2019 dum,\n By the request of Mister Boggs.\n\n Then on the follerin\u2019 Monday he,\n Lookin\u2019 profounder as he prowled,\n This son of sin an\u2019 mystery,\n Into the _Ledger_ orfice owled.\n \u201cAn\u2019 oh! to think,\u201d he sadly groaned,\n \u201cThat earth should bear setch skalliwogs!\n Setch all-fired snakes,\n And no mistakes!\u201d\n Said Mister Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n \u201cWhy, what is up?\u201d asked Mr. Swain;\n \u201cIt seems you\u2019ve had some awful shoves.\u201d\n \u201cThe _Chronicle_,\u201d his agent cried,\n \u201cHas went an\u2019 bin an\u2019 bought some doves!\n Them traitors, wretches, swindlers, cheats,\n Hev smashed us up like polywogs.\n They\u2019ve knocked, I guess,\n Our hoss express\n Higher than any kite,\u201d said Boggs.\n\n \u201cHave you no plan?\u201d asked Mister Swain,\n \u201cTo keep the fellows off our walks?\u201d\n \u201cI _hev_,\u201d said Boggs, as grim as death;\n \u201cWhat do you think of pidging-horks?\n For in my glorious natyve land,\n Acrost the river, \u2019mong the frogs,\n I hev a lot\n All sharply sot\n To eat them pidgings up,\u201d said Boggs.\n\n \u201cThey are the chosen birds of wrath,\n They fly like arrers through the air,\n Or angels sent by orful Death\u2014\n Jist fifty dollars fur a pair;\n An\u2019 cheap to keep, because, you see,\n Upon the enemy they progs.\u201d\n \u201cWell, try it on,\n And now begone!\u201d\n Said Mister Swain to Mister Boggs.\n\n The autumn morn was bright and fair,\n Fresh as a rose with recent rain.\n The pidgins tortled through the air,\n But nary one came home again.\n Some feathers dropped in Chestnut Street,\n Some bills and claws among the logs:\n Wipin\u2019 a tear,\n \u201cI greatly fear\n That all\u2019s not right,\u201d said Mr. Boggs.\n\n Into the _Chronicle_ he went,\n Twice as mysterious as before,\n \u201cAnd _hev_ you heard the orful news?\u201d\n He whispered as he shet the door.\n \u201cOh, I hev come to tell a tale\n Of crime, which all creation flogs,\n Of wretchery\n And treachery\n That bangs tarnation sin,\u201d said Boggs.\n\n \u201cThem _Ledger_ fellers with their tricks,\n Hev slopped clean over crime\u2019s dark cup.\n They\u2019ve bin an\u2019 bought some pidging-horks,\n And they hev _et_ our pidgings up.\n Oh, whut is life wuth livin\u2019 fur\n When editors behave like hogs?\n An\u2019 ragin\u2019 crime\n Makes double time;\n Oh, darn setch villany!\u201d cried Boggs.\n\n \u201cBut hark! bee-hold, to-morrer, thou\n In deep revenge may dry your tears;\n I hev a plan, which, you\u2019ll allow,\n Beats all-git-out when it eppears.\n The ragin\u2019 eagle of the North,\n The bird which all creation flogs,\n Will cause them horks\n To walk ther chalks,\n An\u2019 give us grand revenge,\u201d said Boggs.\n\n \u201cThem glorious birds of liberty,\n Them symbols of our country\u2019s fame,\n Wild, sarsy, furious, and free,\n Indeliably rowdy game;\n They shall revenge them gentile doves,\n Our harmless messengers, by Gogs!\n In which the horks\n Hev stuck ther forks,\u201d\n Cried Mister Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n \u201cFor in my glorious natyve land\n Acrost the river, down below,\n I hev a farm, and in the barn\n Six captyve eagles in a row:\n One hundred dollars fur a pair;\n Fetch out the flimsies frum your togs\n An\u2019 up on high\n _I\u2019ll_ make \u2019em fly,\u201d\n Said Mister Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n But this same editor had heard\n Some hint or rumour, faint or dim,\n How Mister Boggs, it was averred,\n Was coming Paddy over him.\n An earlier tale of soapy deeds\n Then gave his memory startling jogs,\n And full of wrath\n Right in his path\n He went for Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n \u201cHorses and pidgins\u2014pidgin-horks\u201d\u2014\n That was enough to raise his Dutch:\n He saw it all\u2014and also saw\n The eagle\u2014\u201cJust one bird too much.\u201d\n Too mad to mind his shootin\u2019-iron,\n And throw good powder to the dogs,\n He grabbed his chair,\n And then and there\n Corrected Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n After long years had rolled away,\n And Morse\u2019s telegraph came in,\n Still on the facing rival roofs\n Two grey old cages could be seen,\n And young reporters o\u2019er their drinks\n Would tell each other\u2014jolly dogs\u2014\n Of ancient time\n What in this rhyme\n I\u2019ve told of Zion Jersey Boggs.\n\n\n\n\n THE BALLAD OF THE GREEN OLD MAN\n\n\n It was a balmeous day in May, when spring was springing high\n And all amid the buttercups the bees did butterfly;\n While the butterflies were being enraptured in the flowers,\n And winsome frogs were singing soft morals to the showers.\n\n Green were the emerald grasses which grew upon the plain,\n And green too were the verdant boughs which rippled in the rain,\n Far green likewise the apple hue which clad the distant hill,\n But at the station sat a man who looked far greener still.\n\n An ancient man, a boy-like man, a person mild and meek,\n A being who had little tongue, and nary bit of cheek.\n And while upon him pleasant-like I saw the ladies look,\n He sat a-counting money in a brownsome pocket-book.\n\n Then to him a policeman spoke: \u201cUnless you feel too proud,\n You\u2019d better stow away that cash while you\u2019re in this here crowd;\n There\u2019s many a chap about this spot who\u2019d clean you out like ten.\u201d\n \u201cAnd can it be,\u201d exclaimed the man, \u201cthere are such wicked men?\n\n \u201cThen I will put my greenbacks up all in my pocket-book,\n And keep it buttoned very tight, and at the button look.\u201d\n He said it with a simple tone, and gave a simple smile\u2014\n You never saw a half-grown shad one-half so void of guile.\n\n And the bumble-bees kept bumbling away among the flowers,\n While distant frogs were frogging amid the summer showers,\n And the tree-toads were tree-toadying in accents sharp or flat\u2014\n All nature seemed a-naturing as there the old man sat.\n\n Then up and down the platform promiscuous he strayed,\n Amid the waiting passengers he took his lemonade,\n A-making little kind remarks unto them all at sight,\n Until he met two travellers who looked cosmopolite.\n\n Now even as the old was green, this pair were darkly-brown;\n They seemed to be of that degree which sports about the town.\n Amid terrestrial mice, I ween, their destiny was Cat;\n If ever men were gonoffs,[9] I should say these two were that.\n\n And they had watched that old man well with interested look,\n And gazed him counting greenbacks in that brownsome pocket-book;\n And the elder softly warbled with benevolential phiz,\n \u201cGreen peas has come to market, and the veg\u2019tables is riz.\u201d\n\n Yet still across the heavenly sky the clouds went clouding on,\n The rush upon the gliding brook kept rushing all alone,\n While the ducks upon the water were a-ducking just the same,\n And every mortal human man kept on his little game.\n\n And the old man to the strangers very affable let slip\n How that zealousy policeman had given him the tip,\n And how his cash was buttoned in his pocket dark and dim,\n And how he guessed no man alive on earth could gammon him.\n\n In ardent conversation ere long the three were steeped,\n And in that good man\u2019s confidence the younger party deeped.\n The p\u2019liceman, as he shadowed them, exclaimed in blooming rage,\n \u201cThey\u2019re stuffin\u2019 of that duck, I guess, and leavin\u2019 out the sage.\u201d\n\n He saw the game distinctly, and inspected how it took,\n And watched the reappearance of that brownsome pocket-book,\n And how that futile ancient, ere he buttoned up his coat,\n Had interchanged, obliging-like, a greensome coloured note.\n\n And how they parted tenderly, and how the happy twain\n Went out into the Infinite by taking of the train;\n Then up the blue policeman came, and said, \u201cMy ancient son,\n Now you have gone and did it; say what you have been and done?\u201d\n\n And unto him the good old man replied with childish glee,\n \u201cThey were as nice a two young men as I did ever see;\n But they were in such misery their story made me cry;\n So I lent \u2019em twenty dollars\u2014which they\u2019ll pay me by-and-bye.\n\n \u201cBut as I had no twenty, we also did arrange,\n They got from me a fifty bill, and gimme thirty change;\n But they will send that fifty back, and by to-morrow\u2019s train\u2014\u2014\u201d\n \u201cThat note,\u201d out cried the constable, \u201cyou\u2019ll never see again.\u201d\n\n \u201cAnd that,\u201d exclaimed the sweet old man, \u201cI hope I never may,\n Because I do not care a cuss how far it keeps away;\n For if I\u2019m a judge of money, and I _reether_ think I am,\n The one I shoved was never worth a continental dam.\n\n \u201cThey hev wandered with their sorrers into the sunny South,\n They hev got uncommon swallows and an extry lot of mouth.\n In the next train to the North\u2019ard I expect to widely roam,\n And if any come inquirin\u2019, jist say I ain\u2019t at home.\u201d\n\n The p\u2019liceman lifted up his glance unto the sunny skies,\n I s\u2019pose the light was fervent, for a tear were in his eyes,\n And said, \u201cIf in your travels a hat store you should see,\n Just buy yourself a beaver tile and charge that tile to me.\u201d\n\n While the robins were a-robbing acrost the meadow gay,\n And the pigeons still a-pigeoning among the gleam of May,\n All out of doors kept out of doors as suchlike only can,\n A-singing of an endless hymn about that good old man.\n\n-----\n\n[9] _Gonoff_, a Scriptural term for a Member of the Legislature, or\nsuchlike.\n\n\n\n\n CARRYING COALS\n\n\n In the gloomsome abysses where darkness is kept,\n And the spirit of silence for ages has slept,\n In the great shaft of Pottsville, way down in the hole,\n There came seven parties, all dealers in coal;\n But they never had been in that chasm before,\n Nor had the sensation of darkness all o\u2019er,\n Which so greatly expandeth the soul.\n\n And one of \u2019em said, \u201cIt\u2019s an awful delight\n To be infinite deep into no end of night,\n Where the heavenly sunshine can\u2019t manage to spring,\u2014\n And, talking of that, I\u2019ve a notion, by Jing!\n Let we ourselves mine out some coal lumps to-day\n To show to the folks,\u2014which I think, by the way,\n Would be a poetical thing.\u201d\n\n So they filled up their pockets, untried by a doubt,\n And in the hotel they unveiled \u2019em all out;\n But their glances grew strange as they turned o\u2019er the weight,\n Till one of them shouted, \u201cBy thunder, it\u2019s slate!\u201d\n Yet the youngest among them had dealered in coal,\n And unto that traffic surrendered his soul,\n Since the Anno Eighteen Forty-eight.\n\n For all of man\u2019s wisdom is only a dream,\n Which passeth away like a plate of ice-cream,\n And the best of experience fails, as we mark,\n If you go for to dig when you\u2019re all in the dark;\n For there\u2019s always a moral inside of a tale,\n And big things in little things always prevail\n As sure as there\u2019s wood in the bark.\n\n\n\n\n CAREY, OF CARSON\n\n\n The night-mist dim and darkling,\n As o\u2019er the roads we pass,\n Lies in the morning sparkling\n As dewdrops on the grass.\n E\u2019en so the deeds of darkness,\n Which come like midnight dews,\n Appear as sparkling items\n Next morning in the news.\n\n Away in Carson City,\n Far in the Silver Land,\n There lives one Justice Carey,\n A man of head and hand;\n And as upon his table\n The Judge a-smoking sat\n There rowdied in a rougher\n Who wore a gallows hat.\n\n He looked upon the Justice,\n But Justice did not budge\n Until the younger warbled,\n \u201cSay\u2014don\u2019t you know me, Judge?\u201d\n \u201cI think,\u201d said Carey meekly,\n \u201cYour face full well I know,\u2014\n I sent you up for stealing\n A horse a year ago.\u201d\n\n \u201cAy, that is just the hair-pin\n I am, and that\u2019s my line;\n And here is twenty dollars\n I\u2019ve brought to pay the fine.\u201d\n \u201cYou owe no fine,\u201d said Carey,\n \u201cYour punishment is o\u2019er.\u201d\n \u201cNot yet,\u201d replied the rover;\n \u201cI\u2019ve come to have some more.\n\n \u201cFust-rate assault and batt\u2019ry\n I\u2019m goin\u2019 to commit,\n And you\u2019re the mournful victim\n That I intend to hit,\n And give you such a scrampin\u2019\n As never was, nohow;\n And so, to save the lawin\u2019,\n I guess I\u2019ll settle now.\u201d\n\n Up rose the Court in splendour;\n \u201cYoung man, your start is fair,\n Sail in, my son, sail over,\n And we will call it square!\n Go in upon your chances,\u2014\n Perhaps you may not miss;\n I like to see young heroes\n Ambitionin\u2019 like this.\u201d\n\n The young one at the older\n Went in with all his heft,\n And, like a flyin\u2019 boulder,\n At once let out his left;\n The Court, in haste, ducked under\n Its head uncommon spry,\n Then lifted the intruder\n With a puncher in the eye,\u2014\n\n A regular right-hander;\n And like a cannon-ball,\n The young man, when percussioned\n Went over on the wall.\n In just about a second,\n The Court, with all its vim,\n Like squash-vines o\u2019er a meadow,\n Went climbing over him.\n\n Yea, as the pumpkin clambers\n Above an Indian grave,\n Or as the Mississippi\n Inunders with its wave,\n And merrily slops over\n A town in happy sport,\n E\u2019en so that man was clambered\n All over by the Court.\n\n And in about a minute\n That party was so raw,\n He would have seemed a stranger\n Unto his dearest squaw;\n Till he was soft and tender,\n This morsel once so tough,\n And then, in sad surrender,\n He moaned aloud, \u201cEnough!\u201d\n\n He rose; and Justice Carey\n Said to him ere he went,\n \u201cI do not think the fightin\u2019\n You did was worth a cent.\n I charge for time two dollars,\n As lawyers should, \u2019tis plain;\n The balance of the twenty\n I give you back again.\n\n \u201cI like to be obligin\u2019\n To folks with all my powers,\n So when you next want fightin\u2019\n Don\u2019t come in office hours;\n I only make my charges\n For what\u2019s in legal time,\u2014\n Drop in, my son, this evenin\u2019,\n And I\u2019ll not charge a dime.\u201d\n\n The young man took the guerdon,\n As he had ta\u2019en the scars;\n Then took himself awayward\n To the \u2019Ginia City cars.\n \u2019Tis glorious when heroes\n Go in to right their wrongs;\n But if you\u2019re only hair-pins,\n Oh, then beware of tongs!\n\n\n\n\n JOSEPHI IN BENICIA\n\n\n There was a man who spent his mortal life\n A-prisoning until there came a war;\n And with the war there came an enemy,\n And with the enemy came dynamite,\n And with the dynamite the engineers\n Histed that prison-house, and with it all\n That was therein. And when the man came down\n And lay a-dying, round the chaplain lit,\n And asked him \u201cWhat of life?\u201d and he replied,\n \u201cTo me this life has been a blasted cell.\u201d\n And so he died like any other man,\n And thus it is things work among mankind.\n\n The great Josephi\u2014the piano lord\u2014\n When in the land of California\n Was duly published for Benicia,\n Yet never once put in; and then arose\n Dame Rumour with a hundred thousand tongues,\n And people said that he had bust his wires,\n And had neuralgia in his sounding-board,\n And the dyspepsia in his pedal joint,\n And the stricnosis in his upper keys,\u2014\n Yet all was false, and I will tell you why.\n The day before he was to have gone in\n Unto his glory in Benicia,\n There came a visitor whose sun-grilled face\n And grand prize pumpkin air had all the style\n Of a Maud Muller\u2019s father; and this man,\n Being shown in, remarked, \u201cI s\u2019pose you air\n Mister Joseephee?\u201d To him in reply\n The small piano-smasher nodded \u201cYes.\u201d\n And thus the agriculturist went on:\u2014\n \u201cI\u2019m from Beneesh, I am, and I belong\n To the Town Council\u2014that is my posish.\n Down here disposin\u2019 of my barley, and\n I thort I\u2019d call and see yer, being as\n Yer comin\u2019 down ter-morrer fur to play.\u201d\n \u201cJa, dot is so,\u201d replied the music man.\n \u201cYe see, yer comin\u2019 to a stranger town,\n And so I thort I\u2019d let yer hev some pints\n About the programme. We\u2019re a-payin\u2019 yer\n A pot o\u2019 money, and of course yer want\n To suit the ordience.\u201d \u201cVell, vot you like,\u201d\n Exclaimed the great musician. \u201cI can blay\n Chopin, Beethoven, Liszt\u2014ja! all de crate\n Gombosers, and I gifes you vot you shoose.\u201d\n \u201cI never heerd them tunes,\u201d replied his guest.\n \u201cDo yer know \u2018Nancy Lee\u2019?\u201d \u201cNot I, bei Gott!\u201d\n \u201cNor \u2018Mary Ann\u2019?\u201d \u201cNein\u201d (_very haughtily_).\n \u201cThe \u2018Spanish Dona\u2019\u2014the \u2018Monastery Bells\u2019?\u201d\n \u201cGott\u2019s dammerwetter! Himmelspotzen\u2014NEIN!\u201d\n \u201cWall, now, whar did ye learn? My darter Sue\n Goes to Miss Lynch\u2019s, and she knows \u2019em all,\n An\u2019 plays \u2019em all by heart right straight along.\n I never thought her no great shakes, and yet\n She\u2019s clean ahead of you.\u201d A gloomy pause\n Ensued, and two long glares. Then he set on,\n \u201cWhat kind o\u2019 dancing music are ye gwine\n To fetch along? for that\u2019s the heavy jerk.\u201d\n \u201c_Tantz musik!_\u201d Oh, the horror of the voice\n Of great Josephi when he heard these words.\n \u201cYes, certinly. Ain\u2019t ye a-goin\u2019 to play\n Fur dancing arter supper? Wot d\u2019ye s\u2019pose\n We\u2019re gwine to pay yer fur?\u201d (Here came the squall.)\n \u201cGo to der Teufel mit your tantz musik!\n Dere-to your tauter also. Sapperment!\n Verflucht sei deine Seele\u2014do you dink\n I coom to blay fur caddle? I ton\u2019t go\n Unto Benicia. Dell your veller-bigs\n Your tauter blays in my blace\u2014in de blace\n Of Herr Josephi\u2014do you oonderstand,\n You hundert tousend plasted _Schweinigel_!\u201d\n And in the rustic\u2019s face he slammed the door.\n\n He did not play in fair Benicia,\n And in that town he is not popular;\n And in its leading circles seven out\n Of eight regard him as a German fraud,\n Who cannot even play \u201cMy Mary Ann.\u201d\n And thus it is they think he is a sell,\n And thus it is things work among mankind.\n\n\n\n\n THE STORY OF A LIE\n\n\n Who asks an ape to throw a coco-nut\n Should take it not amiss if it be thrown\n On his own head, as echo answers song.\n\n There was a man named Jesse, who was called\n The greatest liar in Connecticut.\n For there are giants among the Brobdingnags.\n\n It was a burning day, and William Hoop\n Sat in the shade, when Jess came riding by.\n When wolves run past your door-step, let them run.\n\n But William cried, \u201cStop for a moment, Jess,\n And tell us a big lie.\u201d Jesse liked it not.\n Ne\u2019er ask a hangman how to tie a noose.\n\n But hastily and sadly he replied,\n \u201cThis is no time for lying now; oh, woe!\u201d\n A wanton widow may wear darkest weeds.\n\n \u201cYour Uncle Sol died very suddenly\n An hour ago, and you would have me lie!\u201d\n Who weaveth nets is often caught in them.\n\n \u201cAnd I am riding for the coroner,\n And for a coffin. William, learn from this\n _Never while living ask a man to lie_.\u201d\n\n Then William ran in and told his wife,\n And he and she and all the family\n Burst into tears. The thistle soon bears thorns.\n\n And in his waggon, leaving everything,\n They posted off and on, four miles away.\n The eagle hastens at the eaglet\u2019s cry.\n\n And when arrived they found the family\n In the large kitchen, but in ne\u2019er a grief.\n It pains a man at times to miss his pain.\n\n There Uncle Sol was buried\u2014to the eyes,\n In a great water-melon, lush and red.\n Life\u2019s sweetest things are water after all:\n\n Which rises in a mist, and comes again\n As rainy tears. And William almost wept\n For rage, because he had no cause to cry.\n\n But after this he never did entreat\n Another man to tell a lie to him.\n Burnt child seeks not a second time the fire.\n\n\n\n\n THE LEGEND OF SAINT ANTHONY\n\n\n The seek-no-further face of loveliness,\n The perfect form of fawn-like springfulness,\n Rich as a bonanza just unbound:\n Catherine Van Peyster, of Fifth Avenue.\n\n She lived a year in Europe\u2014but for aye\n In all the hearts of all who met her there;\n And then her pa allowed her boundless cash,\n Which she laid out in glorious works of art.\n\n Such as the dream-like dresses made by Worth,\n And heavenly hats by Virot, and all things\n Refined, \u00e6sthetic, swell, and classical;\n Yea, even a picture\u2014she bought everything.\n\n \u2019Tis true it was a picture of herself,\n And when she ordered it she simply said,\n \u201cI know that I am very beautiful,\n My mirror tells me that\u2014distinctively;\n\n \u201cBut I am also very clever too,\n For I am of a clever family,\n Papa and sisters all are awful smart;\n Now you must make it somehow sparkle out\n\n \u201cIn what you paint. And as for me I guess\n I\u2019ll show you how to fix it\u2014wait a bit.\n Ain\u2019t there a saint they call Saint Catherine?\n One of my beaux, I think, once called me that.\u201d\n\n \u201c_Si, Illustrissima_,\u201d the artist said,\n \u201cDere is a Santa Catarina, who\n Is beautiful most of the oder sants,\n Vitch giusto suit so lovely mad as you!\n\n \u201cAnd she do always hold opon a vheel.\u201d\n \u201cI see!\u201d cried Miss Van Peyster\u2014\u201cjust the thing,\n The wheel of fortune\u2014and the loveliest saint;\n That\u2019s me exactly. What a perfect fit!\u201d\n\n And so \u2019twas painted, and the painted pair,\n Saint Catherine and Miss Catherine, went across\n Unto New York; and many people came\n To call and worship\u2014or to make believe.\n\n And with the rest came Mr. Anthony,\n A blooming broker, and a mighty man,\n Who did not think small brewings of himself,\n Albeit his studies had been very small,\n\n And very few i\u2019 the heap. His face and form\n Were greasiness and grossness well combined,\n With sneeriness and nearness in the eyes;\n He seemed a kind of coarsest Capuchin.\n\n And much he did admire the quaint conceit\n Of being taken as a holy saint,\n And said, \u201cI\u2019d like to try that thing myself.\n How could a feller fix it\u2014\u2014Catherine?\u201d\n\n \u201cEasy enough,\u201d replied the beautiful:\n \u201cYou\u2019ve only got to send your photograph\n Out to my man in Florence, and to say,\n \u2018_Vous peignez moi comme le Saint Anthony_.\u2019\n\n \u201cI\u2019ll write it for you if you have a card,\n And he will fix it for you _comme il faut_.\u201d\n That very hour the heavy shaver wrote,\n And sent the order for his portraiture.\n\n And in due time \u2019twas done\u2014and further on\n \u2019Twas in the Custom House\u2014and thence \u2019twas sent\n To the Spring Exhibition in New York,\n There was no time to send it to \u201cthe House.\u201d\n\n And Anthony himself beheld it not\n Till it had hung a week upon \u201cthe walls,\u201d\n And all the newspapers had served it up,\n And all the world had merry made withal.\n\n Yea, he _was_ in it\u2014clad in dirty rags,\n A vile abomination. In his hand\n A monstrous rosary. The Sunday Press\n Said \u2019twas a rope of onions, meant to feed\n\n The monstrous hog which filled the canvas up,\n So vast in its proportions that it seemed\n As Anthony were waiting on the hog,\n And not the hog upon Saint Anthony.\n\n In it and in for it. Just as the Saint\n Of Padua is painted, with his pig,\n Only a little more so. And thus ends\n The tale of the great hog and Anthony.\n\n\n\n\n A RUSSIAN LYRIC\n AIR\u2014\u201c_Denkst du daran mein tapfre Lagienka._\u201d\n\n\n \u201cSALTOKOFF SKUPCHIROFSKY,\u201d said the ruler\n Of Russia to his captain of the guard,\n \u201cI will retire; the night is growing cooler\n Have all the troops been posted in the yard?\u201d\n \u201cThey have, my liege, and in the tower o\u2019er you\n The watchman, with an opera-glass, afar\n Looks out to see that no one comes to bore you:\n _Bogu Tsarachnie!_ God protect the Tsar!\u201d\n\n \u201cWhat have you done with him who came this morning,\n And wanted me to buy a lightning-rod?\u201d\n \u201cHe sleeps beneath the Neva, as a warning\n To others like him, not as yet in quod.\u201d\n \u201cThe girl who bored us for a contribution\n To send her blessed clergyman afar?\u201d\n \u201cShe\u2019s strangled by the Seventh Resolution:\n _Bogu Tsarachnie!_ God protect the Tsar!\u201d\n\n \u201cAnd where is he who gave us the conniptions,\n That cheeky man from the United States,\n Who came unto my bedside for subscriptions\n To\u2014what was it?\u2014the \u2018Life of Sergeant Bates\u2019?\u201d\n \u201cUpon a special train that man is flying\n Unto Siberia in a third-class car;\n Thou badest him \u2018dry up!\u2019 and he is drying:\n _Bogu Tsarachnie!_ God protect the Tsar!\u201d\n\n \u201cAnd where is he who bored us for insurance\n On life or fire, who down the chimney came?\u201d\n \u201cMy liege, beneath our feet in deepest durance\n He pays with penance for his little game.\u201d\n \u201cAnd, after him, the pedlar who came plungin\u2019\n Into the parlour, smoking a cigar?\u201d\n \u201cAsk of the vipers in the palace dungeon:\n _Bogu Tsarachnie!_ God protect the Tsar!\u201d\n\n \u201cAnd that young man who always kept a-saying,\n \u2018That is the kind of hair-pin that I am\u2019?\u201d\n \u201cMy liege, the strychnine in his vitals playing\n May tell you how I stopped that kind of flam.\n \u201cAnd he who at this day is still repeating,\n \u2018What, never, never?\u2019\u201d \u201cIn a butt of tar\n We coopered _him_. His heart\u2019s no longer beating:\n _Bogu Tsarachnie!_ God protect the Tsar!\u201d\n\n \u201cAnd where is he who on the imperial fences\n Inscribed _Pop\u2019s Bitters_, and _Take Fooler\u2019s Pills_?\u201d\n \u201cMy lord, his medicines were no defences,\n In Hades he atones for earthly ills.\u201d\n \u201cAnd that confounded nuisance of a Scotch Guard\n Who played the bagpipes up and down the car?\u201d\n \u201cMy lord, the imperial headsman wears his watch-guard:\n _Bogu Tsarachnie!_ God protect the Tsar!\u201d\n\n \u201cCaptain, \u2019tis well. Now telegraph to London\n That every Nihilist has had his dose,\n And that a fresh conspiracy is undone,\n And keep the gum-drop, corn-ball peddlers close\n Who spread sedition in the trains to \u2019stress me;\n And keep the gates of anarchy ajar;\n So may Saint Feoderskidobry bless thee!\n _Bogu Tsarachnie!_ God protect the Tsar!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n MELODRAMNATION\n\n\n \u201cNow Mr. Gallagher is satisfied.\u201d\n So says the Boston _Post_. The facts are these:\n He is the chief of a theatric club,\n And as he deems that he can melodram,\n He melodrammed for it a mighty piece\n Of thundering incidents and awful scenes,\n Which called for just nine actors. And they all\n Declared that each had got the worst and curst\n Of all the parts, and that \u2019twas written thus\n To boom the fame of selfish Gallagher;\n So the first night they came upon the boards,\n With hearts like hornets and with souls like snakes\n And feeling like old pizen, all agog\n To be revenged upon the common foe,\n Who was to act the hero. _Act the first_:\n The hero and his mother meet to part,\n And on her shoulders and o\u2019er all her bust\n The parent had put pins by papersful,\n Till she was like a frightful porcupine;\n And when she pressed her darling to her breast,\n The pins _en masse_ entered his very soul,\n And pricked his nose, and ran into his cheeks,\n So that he howled; but his mamma held on,\n Easing her heart with rapturous revenge\n While agonizing his. In the next act\n He was on shipboard, and \u2019twas in the plot\n That he should be knocked down and cuffed about\n By a most cruel captain; and, God knows,\n The captain played that part most perfectly,\n Since in the start he went for Gallagher\n With a belaying-pin, and laid him out\n _Secundum artem_, and then let him up,\n Only to let into him twice as hot,\n \u2019Mid rapturous hurrahs. In the next act\n The hero led the crew to mutiny,\n And Gallagher was glorious; but just then\n Some one let down the trap on which he stood,\n And there he was, up to his waist in stage,\n Unable to get up or to go down,\n And thus they kept him in captivity\n While all the audience guyed him. When he strove\n To climb they lowered him, and when he sought\n To dodge beneath they highered him again;\n So he went up and down like Erie stock\n Until the scene was shifted. In the next\n He fought the villain of the play, and this\n Was Mr. Hencoop Smith, a stalwart rogue,\n Extremely high on muscle, and the way\n He lathered Gallagher about the stage\n Was Awful Gardener. And when Smith should cry,\n \u201cForgive me\u2014I am crushed!\u201d and Gallagher\n Replied, \u201cI\u2019ll have your life!\u201d the hero lay\n Under the table, while his adversary\n Bemauled him with a chair-leg. It was o\u2019er,\n And Gallagher, all black and blue, went home\n To plotter out revenge. On the next night\n The piece was adverred to be played again,\n And Gallagher sent round a messenger,\n Who said he was too ill to play his part,\n But he would send a substitute. He did\u2014\n A giant-like ferocious prize-fighter,\n Under another name. And how he played!\n He squeezed the mother into raving fits,\n And jerked her wig away by accident,\n And threw the cruel captain down the trap,\n And larruped all the actors; and when Smith\n Came on to fight, he took him by the heels\n And mopped the stage with him until \u2019twas clean,\n Then hurled him through the flat. All was a wreck:\n And in the front seat sat the Gallagher\n And laughed until he cried. Revenge is sweet!\n\n\n\n\n A TALE OF IDAHO\n\n\n When they had finished the ethnology,\n And polished up the climate and the crops,\n And glorified the different kinds of bugs,\n And told in turn their lies about the snakes,\n And fish and deer and things, of Idaho,\n A pensive cuss in spectacles inquired,\n \u201cAll this is well enough; now how about\n Your educational facilities?\n And let me see in dots the time they go.\u201d\n\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s the only thing we really lack,\u201d\n Replied the Ancient, with a silvery sigh;\n \u201cWe do defect in _that_ ostensibly.\n We have the schools, but then we cannot git\n The folks to run \u2019em, or who will remain\n Adjacent to \u2019em, for they will not keep.\u201d\n \u201cHow!\u2014do they _die_?\u201d \u201cWall, some on \u2019em expired,\n Though Idaho ain\u2019t an expirin\u2019 State;\n But I will tell you just the time they go.\n\n \u201cWe had a fine young fellow from the East;\n He licked the boys, and also kissed the gals,\n And was all round uncommon popular,\n Bein\u2019 likewise an awful fightin\u2019 man,\n And there he _did_ slop over. For one day\n He met a grizzly bar upon the prowl,\n And whistled to it, and the grizzly _come_;\n But when he went he carried by express\n All of that fine young man inside of him;\n And that is just about the time they go.\n\n \u201cWe had another from Connecticut:\n A widder run him down, and married him\n Inside the very school-house where he taught,\n Just as an Injun cooks a terrapin\n In its own shell, or as a lovely deer\n Is sometimes aboriginally biled\n Inside of its own skin, for that poor man\n Has been in bilin\u2019 water ever sense:\n They say she makes it solemn hot for him.\n And that is just about the time they go.\n\n \u201cThe third was well enough, but he was lame;\n I needn\u2019t tell you how _that_ one got spiled;\n For sense he couldn\u2019t run, one day, of course,\n The Injuns overtook him, and the way\n They treated him was pretty nigh as bad\n As if they had been widders, and that man\n Their lawful spouse. They also made it hot,\n Because they took and briled him at the stake.\n And that is just about the time they go.\n\n \u201cThen we tried women-folks to keep the school.\n We writ for one. She came; and as she lit\n Down from the stage, a man proposed to her\n And was accepted, and she married him\n That very night; in fact, within an hour\n He gin a party, and we had a dance;\n But Education suffered all the same,\n As she declined to teach, bein\u2019 inclined\n To conjugate\u2014excuse my little joke;\n But that is just about the time they go.\n\n \u201cThe second\u2014wall, _I took_ the second one\n About the middle of the week she come;\n But telegraphed unto the Institute,\n \u2018Send on some more; keep sending of \u2019em on.\u2019\n And so they kept a-comin\u2019, but they kep\u2019\n A-going speedier than they arrove,\n For the third lady was abducted by\n A highwayman before she got to us\u2014\n She took it awful kindly, I believe.\n And that is just about the time they go.\u201d\n\n \u201cBut why,\u201d exclaimed the wondering traveller,\n \u201cDon\u2019t you obtain a scareful, ugly one\u2014\n Some hideous old faggot, just like that\n Tremendous terror with the lantern-jaws\n By yonder ticket-window? She would keep.\u201d\n \u201cAlas! how strange,\u201d replied the Ancient Man;\n \u201cHow is it that you people from the East\n Will never understand us pioneers?\n That woman is my wife\u2014the very one\n I cut away from school; and she\u2019s by far\n The handsomest there was in all the drove.\n For that is just about the time they go.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n A CALIFORNIAN ROMANCE\n\n\n Know\u2019st thou the burning lay of Dante\u2019s own,\n \u201c_Nix mangiare \u00e9 il diavolo!_\n _Ma peggior la donna?_\u201d that\u2019s to say,\n \u201c\u2019Tis hard to be hard up, but harder still\n To get ahead of women.\u201d Never much,\n While in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.\n\n Oh, listen to me, for the tale I tell\n Is of Chicago, and the latest out,\n And by the noble _Tribune_ novelist.\n \u201cSay, do you mean it, honest Injun, now?\u201d\n Said Vivian O\u2019Riley to his sire.\n \u201cAnd faith I do,\u201d the earnest sire replied:\n \u201cMarry this girl if so ye choose, me son,\n But\u2014if ye do\u2014the divil a ha\u2019penny\n Of all me fortune will yees ever see,\n While in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-hids shine.\u201d\n\n Two hours have passed, and so have eight or ten\n Slow-rolling tramway cars, until there comes\n The one which Vivian wants, and soon it lands\n The lover at the door of Pericles\n O\u2019Rourke, the father of _bellissima_,\n The Lady Ethelberta. Lo, she sits\n In her boudoir (the high-toned word for \u201croom\u201d),\n Casting her soul in reverie o\u2019er the trees,\n While in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.\n\n \u201cI have bad news for you, my utmost own,\u201d\n Said Vivian in sad tones unto his love.\n \u201cCusses and crocuses upon my luck!\n And damns and daffodils on everything!\u201d\n And as he spoke there came into his face\n A grey old scaly look which seemed to say,\n _Don\u2019t bluff or you\u2019ll be called_. \u201cMy dad and I\n Have had a round about, and he has dis\u2014\n Sis\u2014sis\u2014inherited me; and I have\n Been given the g.-b. on your account,\n My be\u2014b\u2014beau\u2014tiful. And I am now\n A beg\u2014egg\u2014eggar for you, Bertie dear!\n While in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.\n\n Her soft dusk eyes grew wide and serious.\n\n \u201cYes,\u201d he continued, \u201cI am regular poor,\n Poor as a busted Indian, and of course\n It follows in the logic of our life\n That I must give you up. I cannot ask\n One in the golden glory of events\n To come and share a fate which runs upon\n A thousand annual dollars. Ne\u2019er a case.\n While in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.\u201d\n\n She looked at him with an incarnadine,\n Rich, passionate, scarlet-sanguine crimson flush\n Surging into her cheeks. If it had been\n A _full_, \u2019tis probable that Vivian\n Would have gone under; but a _flush_\n Could never scare him or his similar,\n While in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.\n\n \u201cOh, Vivian!\u201d she gurgled, like a dove,\n \u201cOh, do you think I will let up on you?\n And do you deem I would go back upon\n The note I signed, and run to protest?\u2014no\u2014\n Not while the snowy paper of my truth\n Is quir\u00e9d by the young-eyed cherubim,\n And in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.\u201d\n\n Three months or ninety days went by, and then\n Upon a golden Californian\n December afternoon, with azure skies\n Like those of summer as they are produced\n In less expensive countries, men beheld\n A diamondaine wedding at the house\n Of Ethelberta\u2019s sire. As Vivian\n And his fair bride sat in the car\u2014ri\u2014age\n Which bore them to the station, ever on\n She gazed upon him like a Lamia\n With a strange look, which one might call, in fact,\n A weirdly precious smile. He gazed at her.\n \u201cAnd so you would not leave me, love?\u201d he cooed,\n \u201cEven when you thought me poor?\u201d And she replied,\n \u201cNever, my precious one. I learned lang syne\n That when a sucker once drops off the hook\n It never bites again. And well you know\n That you were on the point of dropping off,\n And so your pa and I put up the job\n So as to land you, dear\u2014as faith we did\u2014\n A little quicker. Oh, men, men, men, men!\n If ye thus round, girls _will_ get square with you,\n While in Night\u2019s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE STORY OF MR. SCROPER, ARCHITECT\n\n\n Yes, I\u2019ll tell you how it happened\u2014that, too, with all due respect\n To the memory of Scroper, late departed architect\u2014\n How it came that he departed so abruptly in the train;\n Why it was he\u2019s been so late, too, in returnin\u2019 back again.\n\n Now some folks are born to greatness, some achieve it, as you\u2019ve read;\n And some justly stand and take it as it dollops on their head;\n But in this sublime Republic, where it\u2019s help and help again,\n We all generally make it in cahoot with other men.\n\n Scroper was a fine young fellow, of a monstrous enterprise;\n Likewise really ambitious, for he was so bound to rise,\n And he left no stone unturned\u2014nor a log\u2014he rolled \u2019em all,\n Till at last he got the contract for our new great City Hall.\n\n Now, of all our mortal actors here upon this earthly stage,\n The contractors have the hardest parts to play, I will engage;\n Specially in bran-new cities, just between the knead and bake,\n And where all the population are severely on the make.\n\n What between the Common Council, and the more uncommon sort,\n Politicians, Press, and preachers, Scroper fell uncommon short.\n All of such as come a-plummin\u2019 when a puddin\u2019s to be had;\n All against his best contractin\u2019 counteractin\u2019 mighty bad.\n\n Therefore when this edificial had got up his edifice,\n All who\u2019d not been edifishing with him soon got up a hiss;\n Said the stuff upon the buildin\u2019 was the worst that could be had,\n Likewise called the architexture architechnically bad.\n\n So it came one solemn evenin\u2019 in a Presbyterian rain\n Mr. Scroper all in silence gently took the Northern train;\n All he left was one small message to a friend who shared his home,\u2014\n _When the darned affair blows over, telegraph for me to come_.\n\n So he sat one summer mornin\u2019, far away in Montreal,\n Musin\u2019 on his recent patrons, while at heart he darned \u2019em all,\n When there came a little letter datin\u2019 from his recent home,\u2014\n \u201c_All the thing is quite blown over, back again we bid you come_.\n\n \u201c_For last night we had a tempest,\u2014while the mighty thunder rang,_\n _Up there came a real guster, which blew down the whole shebang._\n (_Shebang_\u2019s a word from Hebrew, meanin\u2019 Seven, sayeth Krupp,\n And applied to any shanty where they play at seven-up.)\n\n \u201c_Truly it was well blown over all to splinders in the night,_\n _And the winds of heaven are blowing o\u2019er the ruins as I write._\u201d\n Gentlemen, the story\u2019s over. It would last for many a day\n If it told of every buildin\u2019 built upon the swindlin\u2019 lay.\n\n\n\n\n THAT INTERESTIN\u2019 BOY\n\n\nHE sat upon the window-sill and jingled ninety cents. There came\nalong another boy, who said, \u201cHow are you, Pence? You\u2019re goin\u2019 out\na-Christmassin\u2019, I guess, among the Dutch, to buy some gifts.\u201d The\nother spoke: \u201cNo\u2014not exactly much. I am in luck, this year, I am.\nI haven\u2019t any bills. My sister\u2019s sick, and can\u2019t expect no presents but\nher pills. My brother Ben\u2019s in Canada, away upon the wing. Of\ncourse, you know he can\u2019t suppose I\u2019ll buy him anything. My mother\npulled my hair, last night, until she made me squall. Of course she\nknows that she\u2019s gone up for anything at all.\u201d \u201cBut there\u2019s your father,\u201d\nsaid his friend. \u201cWell,\u2014yes\u2014I really thought that I was stuck on the\nold man, and that he had me caught, and I was kinder looking round\nto hunt him up a pipe; but then, this very mornin\u2019 he hit me such a\nwipe! That fixed his Christmas goose for him, and took away his joy.\nNow all this money\u2019s goin\u2019 to a good and clever boy, to buy him lots of\npea-nuts and candy, I\u2019ll engage\u2014with caramels; and that good boy is\njust my size and age.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n MISS MILES, THE TELEGRAPH GIRL\n\n\n Thy heart is like some icy lake,\n On whose cold brink I stand;\n Oh, buckle on my spirit\u2019s skate,\n And take me by the hand!\n\n And lead, thou living saint, the way\n To where the ice is thin,\n That it may break beneath my feet,\n And let a lover in.\n\n _Spiritualistic Poetry._\n\n Since Soul first basked in Passion\u2019s sun,\n I always ran to seed\n In seeking One who\u2019d gone and done\n Some great heroic deed;\n And deemed I\u2019d find Life\u2019s Earnest Truth\n In Gloriana Clarke,\n Whose eyes were like two carriage lamps\n Advancing through the dark.\n\n But as the rose of morning fades\n Before the fire of noon,\n Or sparrows yield in sylvan glades\n To mocking-birds in June,\n My Gloriana\u2019s stock went down\u2014\n Its wheat all turned to chaff\u2014\n When I got in with Mary Miles,\n Who ran the telegraph.\n\n Her brow betokened serious life;\n I knew my final queen;\n A soul divine in gaiter-boots,\n A Dream in crinoline.\n Her parasol a glory seemed\n Around a vivid saint,\n The whole one spirit-photograph\n Illumed with heavenly paint.\n\n And thus she lifted up her voice,\n That mission-mantled maid;\n And thus she spoke with golden grace,\n And sacredly she said\u2014\n A-pointing at me all the time\n With that same parasol,\n The light which gleams from silent lands\n Around her seemed to fall\u2014\n\n \u201cYou\u2019ve told of great and holy deeds\u2014\n I s\u2019pose they all are true\u2014\n But in our telegraphic line\n We\u2019ve some adventures, too;\n And though I do not like to boast\n Of what I ever done,\n _One_ thing my Moral Consciousness\n Declares was Number One.\n\n \u201cLast Fall I was in Tennessee\n A-travelling might and main,\n When all at once the engine broke\u2014\n They couldn\u2019t run the train;\n And if another train should come\n \u2019Twould rather make us scream.\u201d\n List to the glorious deed she did,\n This angel of my dream.\n\n \u201cI saw a telegraphic line\n Was running by our _rout_,\n Though not a house or a machine\n Was anywhere about.\n And the conductor said, said he,\n With his wild eyes of light:\n \u2018Miss Miles, if we\u2019d a battery,\n I\u2019d fix this scrape all right.\n\n \u201c\u2018I\u2019d send \u2019em down a telegram\n Some twenty miles below,\n And ask for help.\u2019 I looked at him\u2014\n \u2018I\u2019ll fix the business, Joe.\n Is there a pair of nippers here?\n If so, those nippers bring;\n And if you can\u2019t, a sharp-edged file\n Would be a heaven-sent thing.\u2019\u201d\n\n \u201cUnshadowed girl! I see the dodge,\u201d\n I cried in rapturous joy;\n \u201cAnd didst thou climb the post thyself?\u201d\n Said she, \u201cI did, my boy.\n A higher law of moral truth\n Gave courage to my soul;\n I did not show my garters once\n In going up the pole.\n\n \u201cNo poet ever felt such thrills\n In touching of his lyre\n As I did when I found there came\n A message through the wire.\n That wire I cut, and \u2019tween my teeth\n I held it\u2014ay, with pride\u2014\n And with my tongue the current clicked\n To the wire on t\u2019other side.\n\n \u201cOn one side came the message in\n From some man in New York:\n \u2018_Buy if you can, at ninety-five,_\n _Five thousand sides of pork._\u2019\n And this same electricity\n I changed as in a flash:\n \u2018_Send down an engine right away,_\n _Or we shall go to smash._\u2019\n\n \u201cThe engine came, and all were saved\u2014\n Yet life is but a Dream.\n I live\u2014thou livest in a cloud:\n We are not what we seem.\n Still craving for the Infinite\n In Time\u2019s ideal lodge,\n I grasped a truth\u2014yet after all\n \u2019Twas but an earthly dodge.\u201d\n\n I gazed upon that spirit grand,\n Upon my knees I sank,\n And from mine eyes the burning sand\n The scalding tear-drops drank.\n Then soft she smiled: \u201cIf deeds like this\n Can yield such victory,\n And I am in your line, my love,\n Then, love, I yield to thee.\u201d\n\n Ho, maidens of Vienna\u2019s show!\n Ho, matrons of Lucerne!\n Look out for us next summer, when\n We give your shop a turn.\n I have won my soul\u2019s ideal,\n I have booked her for a wife;\n And the Fancy and the Real\n Are united in my life.\n\n\n\n\n AN AMERICAN COCK-TALE\n\n\n PROFESSOR LUTHER CRANMER BANGS\n Has travelled in Europe more than a year,\n And no one need ever be troubled with pangs\n At telling him aught which he thought was severe;\n For there\u2019s ne\u2019er a Yankee of any size,\n No matter how sharply he chaffs or slangs,\n That can boast he ever has taken a rise\n On Professor Luther Cranmer Bangs.\n\n _He_ was the man whom Dr. Snayle\n Read a lecture to on a morning call\u2014\n Read it clear through from bill to tail;\n And Bangs like Old Piety bore it all.\n Said Snayle, when the sheets were all up-read,\n \u201cI\u2019m a-going with this to Boston, you know\u201d\u2014\n \u201cI\u2019m glad to hear it,\u201d his listener said:\n \u201cI always _did_ hate those Bostonians so!\u201d\n\n Well, last week on a City Atlas \u2019bus\n The Professor and I went riding down,\n While the driver politely gave to us\n Opinions on things about the town.\n And finding my friend was \u201cprone to receive,\u201d\n And came from the Western land afar,\n He told him just what one _ought_ to believe\n In politics, piety, love, and war.\n\n Then glancing at Bangs, who sat to leeward,\n Looking as mild as cambric tea,\n He said: \u201cI once \u2019ad\u2014but I soon got cured\n Of\u2014a wish to go to Amerikee.\n I was tired of always a-drivin\u2019 these cusses,\n And so I thought I would like to range\u201d\u2014\u2014\n \u201cYou were right,\u201d said Bangs. \u201cIn our Yankee \u2019busses\n It\u2019s the _driver_ who takes (and keeps) the change!\u201d\n\n Sharp glanced the driver at Bangs; then said,\n \u201cWhat scared me of goin\u2019 was this, d\u2019ye see,\u2014\n I\u2019d a friend in New York, whose letters I read;\n And he wrote: In the whole of your country,\n He \u2019ad looked the biggest graveyards through,\n Looked \u2019em through with uncommon keer,\n But never \u2019ad come to a single view\n Of a cove[10] as wos aged fifty year.\n\n \u201cAnd as this is the case in hevery State,\n I think there\u2019s nothink on hearth for cure\u2019n\n A chap hof a fancy to hemigrate\n Like readin\u2019 of them graveyards of yourn.\n So I thought I\u2019d rather perlong my breath,\n Tho\u2019 sometimes here a fellow they hangs\u201d\u2014\u2014\n \u201cYou are right, my friend. Choose your own way of death,\n _I_ go in for that,\u201d said Professor Bangs.\n\n \u201cBut I see you have not understood\n Why no aged person is ever found\n Among us. We only want _young_ blood\n On our driving, thriving, Yankee ground.\n Youth alone has the power to go it;\n Old men are a drag on putting it through,\n So we kill them off\u2014and our tombstones show it\u2014\n Before they arrive at forty-two.\u201d\n\n Here the driver gave a long _cher_\u2014_rup_!\n And gazed at the Yankee, dark and wan,\n As if he had woke the wrong passenger up\n While calmly Professor Bangs went on:\n \u201cIn walking up and down Broadway,\n Large mourning sign-boards at times appear\n With this inscription in letters grey\u2014\n \u2018_Elderly persons extinguished here_.\u2019\n\n \u201cAnd they put in your hand a pamphlet small,\n Adapted to people of different stations,\n Which cites the law, and exhorts them all\n _To dismiss in peace_ their old relations.\n \u2018Why let them linger in a vale,\u2019\n It states, \u2018where often colds they catch?\n Send them to _us_, and we\u2019ll end the tale\n With politeness, humanity, and dispatch.\u2019\n\n \u201c\u2018N.B.\u2014For those who would die by the trigger\n We\u2019ve a merciful man who\u2019s a practised shot,\n With an elegant room, and a careful nigger\n To lay them genteelly out on the spot.\n Our principal has a chemist of fame,\n Whom he exclusively employs on\n Those who set their checks on a different game\n And like to pass to heaven by poison.\u2019\n\n \u201c\u2019Tis thus the ladies generally choose it;\n They love to die without pain or pangs\n By a nice little globule\u2014who could refuse it?\n None but a man,\u201d said Professor Bangs.\n \u201cA _saw buck_ extra they always charge\n For the stylish mode of extinguishing breath.\n A saw buck\u2019s ten dollars. It\u2019s rather large,\n But then it ensures you a _cocktail_ death.\u201d\n\n \u201cVot may that be?\u201d said the driver, meekly,\n In the tone of a greatly altered man.\n I observed that he seemed to be growing weakly\n Since the Professor his story began.\n \u201cA cocktail\u2019s a tipple\u2014America vaunts of it\u2014\n So flavoured, so foamy, so spiced, and whirled,\n That he who can get as much as he wants of it\n Very soon drinks himself out of the world.\n\n \u201c\u2019Tis said in the sky\u2014right over Paris,\n Where the American heaven is found,\n Where everything brick-like and fast and rare is\u2014\n The cocks with tumblers for tails run round.\n They cut to the bar for all things thinkable,\u2014\n All that is nice is a gratis boon,\u2014\n Then they come back with your favourite drinkable\n And their sickle-feather\u2019s a silver spoon!\n\n \u201cBut he who invented the cocktail brew is\n The man before you. Thus came the hint:\n I had once been kissing a pretty Jewess,\n Who just before had been nibbling mint;\n And in order to recall the taste\n Which I found in pressing her luscious two lips,\n I mingled brandy and mint, in haste,\n With sugar and ice\u2014and thus made Juleps.\n\n \u201cThe first step was, therefore, the julep perfected,\n Which gives us a _menthal_ spirit of wine;\n And finding myself thereby respected,\n I sought to make bitter and sweet combine.\n So I took of bitters aromatic\n (I prefer the tincture of bark myself,\n With orange flavoured, but if you lack it,\n Try any kind on the bar-room shelf).\n\n \u201cAnd I fixed them with sugar, and ice, and spirits,\n In a silver tumbler, lightning-quick, sir,\n Which I shook till all their several merits\n Were combined in one subtle and strange elixir.\n Then I passed it through a silver sieve\n Kept carefully free from spot or rust;\n And the final jimglorious touch to give,\n I threw in a sprinkle of nutmeg-dust.\n\n \u201cAnd I am told by the spirit-rappers\n That in the American Paris-heaven,\n Though they\u2019ve fancy drinks which are total snappers,\n There\u2019s nothing better than mine are given.\n So they die in New York without any pangs,\n For they know in the next world, to requite \u2019em,\n They\u2019ll sit over Paris,\u201d said Mr. Bangs,\n \u201cA-drinking cocktails _ad infinitum_.\u201d\n\n Here we got down, and the driver said,\n \u201cVell, _you_\u2019re of the kind that will allers bang \u2019em!\u201d\n And turning our mocassins homeward, we sped\n To that great American wigwam, the Langham.\n Said Bangs, \u201cO\u2019er _my_ eyes there is drawn no wool.\n That man has no heart who would tell you a mock tale;\n But story for story I told to the Bull,\n What I call a real American cocktail.\u201d\n\n-----\n\n[10] _Cove_, a word erroneously supposed to be slang. It is derived from\nthe Gypsy _covo_ or _covi_, meaning _that_\u2014that fellow, that thing.\n\n\n\n\n JUDGE WYMAN\n A RURAL YANKEE LEGEND\n\n\n Long ago, in the State of Maine,\n There lived a Judge\u2014a good old soul,\n Rather well up in \u201cgenial vein,\u201d\n And not by any means \u201cdown on\u201d the bowl.\n N.B.\u2014By \u201cbowl\u201d I mean the \u201ccup,\u201d\n And by \u201ccup\u201d\u2014N.B.\u2014I mean a _glass_,\n Since neither bowls nor cups go up\n At present when we our liquor pass.\n (Although I recall\u2014\n \u2019Tis three years this Fall\u2014\n When travelling in the wilderness,\n And things were all in an awful mess,\n And our crockery, with a horrible crash,\n Had gone its way to eternal smash)\n (It came, as the driver allowed, from racin\u2019),\n We drank champagne from a tin wash-basin.\n Excuse the digression\u2014_non est crimen_\u2014\n And return to our Judge, whose name was Wyman.\n The Judge oft drank in a hostelrie\n Kept by a man whose name was Sterret,\n Where he met with jolly company,\n But where the whisky was void of merit.\n The real Mini\u00e9 rifle brand,\n That at forty rods kills out of hand.\n\n Well, it came to pass that one night the Judge\n At Sterret\u2019s, after a long, hot day,\n Got so tight that he couldn\u2019t budge,\n And found himself \u201cwell over the bay,\u201d\n With a \u201csnake in his boot\u201d and one in his hat,\n Like a biled owl, or a monkey horned,\n Tangle-legged, hawk-eyed, on a bat,\n Peepy, skewered, and slewed, and corned.\n Couldn\u2019t tell a skunk from a pint of Cologne,\n Couldn\u2019t see the difference \u2019tween _fips_ and cents;\n And when he attempted to walk alone,\n Simply made a Virginia fence;\n Till liquor yielded at last to sleep,\n And he sank into Dream River\u2014four miles deep.\n\n _Sanctus Ivus fuit Brito, advocatus sed non latro._\n \u201cSaint Ives the Briton first took a brief,\n For though a lawyer he wasn\u2019t a thief.\u201d\n This is what the story declares,\n Which says he listens to lawyers\u2019 prayers.\n Likely enough! perhaps he may\u2014\n Whenever a lawyer tries to pray!\n But another legend, old and quaint,\n Assigns them a different kind of saint,\n With a singular foot and peculiar hue,\n Whose breath is tinged with a beautiful blue;\n\n And this was _rather_ the saint, I think,\n Who inspired the young lawyers, twenty-four,\n Who helped Judge Wyman to stow his drink,\n And made them rejoice to hear him snore.\n Who, save the devil, would not have wept\n To see these graceless legal loons\n Tricking the good old Judge as he slept,\n And filling his pockets with Sterret\u2019s spoons?\n With silver spoons; likewise for butter\n A handsome ten-dollar silver knife;\n Then put Judge Wyman on a shutter,\n And carried him home to his loving wife.\n\n If any ladies read these rhymes,\n Which in Edgar A. Poetry are called \u201crunes,\u201d\n They may just imagine what sort of times\n Mrs. Wyman had when she found the spoons!\n The Judge\u2019s grief was full of merit,\n And his lady wasn\u2019t inclined to flout it;\n But she quietly took the spoons to Sterret,\n And nothing more was said about it.\n A month went by, and _Fama_, the wench!\n Had not spread a whisper to urge remorse,\n And Judge Wyman sat on the legal bench,\n Trying a fellow for stealing a horse.\n The evidence was all due north.\n It froze the prisoner every minute,\n Till Judge Wyman called the culprit forth,\n And asked what \u201che had to say _agin_ it?\u201d\n\n The prisoner looked at the planks of pine\n Of the little rural court-house ceiling,\n At all the jury in a line,\n Then answered, his only small card dealing,\n \u201cJudge, I hev lots of honesty,\n But when I\u2019m drunk I can\u2019t control it;\n And as for this \u2019ere hoss\u2014d\u2019ye see?\u2014\n I was drunk as blazes when I stole it.\u201d\n Answered the Judge, \u201cIf this Court were a dunce,\n She would say, in law that is no excuse;\n For the Court held that opinion _once_,\n But of late her connection\u2019s been gettin\u2019 loose.\n One may be certain on law to-day,\n And find himself to-morrow dumb.\u2014\n\n \u201cBut answer me one thing truly, and say\n Where\u2019bouts it was you got your rum?\u201d\n \u201cI drank because I was invited,\n And got my rum at Sterret\u2019s, d\u2019ye see?\u201d\n \u201cMr. Sheriff,\u201d cried the Judge, excited,\n \u201cThis instant set that poor man free!\n The liquor that Sterret sells, by thunder!\n Would make a man do anything,\n And some time or other, I shouldn\u2019t wonder\n If it made a saint on the gallows swing;\n It will run a man to perdition quicker\n Than it takes a fiddler to reel off tunes;\n _Why, this Court herself once got drunk on that liquor,_\n _And stole the whole of old Sterret\u2019s spoons_!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n IN NEVADA\n\n\n Like an awful alligator\n Breathing fire and screeching hell-some,\n With a pack of hounds behind him,\n As if hunted by the devil,\n Came the smoking locomotive,\n Followed by the cars and tender,\n Down among the mountain gorges,\n Till it stopped before a village\n As the starry night came on.\n\n Just before a mountain village,\n Where there was a howling shindy\n Just around a bran-new gallows,\n With a roaring blazing bonfire\n Casting a red light upon it,\n While a crowd of roughest rowdies\n Shouted, \u201cCuss him! darn his vitals!\n Bust him! sink him! burn him! skin him!\u201d\n Evidently much excited\n As the starry night came on.\n\n On the gallows stood a culprit\n Shrieking painfully for mercy.\n As the train and engine halted,\n Louder yelled the gasping victim.\n Then out cried the grim conductor,\n \u201cWhat in thunder is the matter?\n What\u2019s ye doin\u2019 with that feller?\n Why\u2019ve ye got both fire and gallows?\u201d\n And unto him some one answered,\n As the starry night came on:\u2014\n\n \u201cThis all-fired, skunk-eyed villain,\n Whom you see upon the gallows,\n Lately stole the loveliest mewel[11]\n That you ever sot your peeps on,\n For a hundred shiny dollars,\n Went and sold it to the Greasers;\n But, as you perceive, we\u2019ve nailed him,\n And at present we\u2019re debatin\u2019\n Whether we had better hang him,\n Or else roast him like an Injun,\n Ere the starry night comes on.\n\n \u201cAnd I think ez ther ar\u2019 ladies\n Here to grace this gay occasion,\n In the train, and quite convenient,\n We had better take and burn him.\n \u2019Twould be kinder interestin\u2019,\n Or, as folks might say, romantic,\n To behold an execution,\n As we do \u2019em here in Hell Town,\n In the real frontier fashion,\n Ere the starry night comes on.\u201d\n\n Up from all the assembled ladies,\n And from all the passageros,\n Went a scream of protestation,\u2014\n \u201cWhat! for nothing but a mewel!\n Only for a hundred dollars\n Roast alive a fine young fellow!\n Never, never, never, ne\u2014ver!\u201d\n Falling on her knees, a damsel\n Begged the maddened crowd to spare him,\n And to her replied the spokesman,\n As the starry night came on:\u2014\n\n \u201cSince the lady begs it of us,\n And as we ar\u2019 galiant fellers,\n We will smash the tail of Jestis,\n And will spare this orful miscrint,\n Ef you\u2019ll raise a hundred dollars\n To replace the vanished mewel.\n Then this fiend, unwhipped, undamaged,\n May go wanderin\u2019 to thunder,\n Soon as he darnation pleases,\n Ere the starry night comes on.\u201d\n\n Straight among the pitying ladies,\n And the other passageros,\n Went the hat around in circle.\n Dollars, quarters, halves, and greenbacks\n Rained into it till the hundred\n Was accomplished, and the ransom\n Paid unto Judge Lynch in person,\n Who received it very gracious,\n And at once released the prisoner,\n Sternly bidding him to squaddle,\n Just as fast as he could make it,\n Ere the starry night came on.\n And the lady who by kneeling\n Had destroyed the path of justice,\n Seized upon the fine young fellow,\n He who had the mulomania,\n Or who was a kleptomuliac;\n And she led him by the halter,\n While the reckless population\n Made atrocious puns upon it;\n And she stowed him in the Pullman\n As the safest sanctuary,\n As the starry night came on.\n\n It was over. Loud the whistle\n Blew a signal of departure;\n Still the dying bonfire flickering\n Showed on high the ghastly gallows,\n Seeming like some hungry monster\n Disappointed of a victim,\n Gasping as in fitful anger,\n Pouring out unto the gallows\n Or the sympathetic scaffold\n All the story of its sorrow,\n As the clouds passed o\u2019er the moon-face,\n And the starry night came on.\n\n Soon the train and those within it\n Reached and passed a second station,\n And was speeding ever onward,\n When at once a shriek came ringing\u2014\n \u2019Twas an utterance from the lady\n Who by tears had baffled justice;\n Loud she cried, \u201cWhere is my hero?\n Where, oh, where\u2019s the handsome prisoner?\u201d\n And the affable conductor\n Searched the train from clue to ear-ring,\n But they could not find the captive.\n He had clearly just evaded\n At the station just behind them,\n As the starry night came on.\n Then outspoke a man unnoted\n Hitherto: \u201cI heard the fellow\n Say just now to the conductor,\n Ere we reached the second teapot,\n That he reckoned he must hook it\n This here time a little sooner,\n If he hoped to get his portion\n Of the hundred, since the last time\n He came awful nigh to lose it;\n For it might be anted off all\n \u2019Fore he got a chance to strike it,\n Ere the starry night came on.\u201d\n\n And the Unknown thus continued:\n \u201cThey hev hed that gallows standin\u2019\n All the summer, and the people\n Mostly git ther livin\u2019 from it,\n For they take ther turns in bein\u2019\n Mournful victims who hev stolen\n Every one a lovely mewel;\n And they always every evenin\u2019\n Hev the awful death-fire kindled,\n And the ghastly captive ready.\n It\u2019s the fourth time I hev seen it,\n Comin\u2019 through and never missed it;\n Only for a variation\n Now and then they hire a nigger\n For the people from New England,\n As the starry night comes on.\n\n \u201cAnd they find that fire and gallows\n Just as good as a bonanza,\n For they got the Legislater\n Lately to incopperate it;\n And I hear the stock is risin\u2019\n Up like prairie smoke in autumn.\n Yes, in this world men diskiver\n Cur\u2019ous ways to make a livin\u2019,\n Ez you\u2019ll find when you hev tried it\n For a year or so about here.\u201d\n And the passengers in silence\n Mused upon this new experience,\n Most of all the fine young lady,\n As the dragon darted onward,\n And the starry night came on.\n\n-----\n\n[11] Mule.\n\n\n\n\n THE PHILANTHROPIC CLUB\n\n\n I am the member of a club of reg\u2019lar noble seeds,\n Whose object is to give rewards for philanthropic deeds.\n We root for magnanimity as spiders hunt for flies,\n So we lately held a meeting to award our annual prize.\n\n Then our President reported with great solemnity\n The case of Dayball Carter, a man in Tennessee,\n Who plunged into a burning store as if his doom had come,\n But emerg\u00e9d with an infant\u2014and a gallon jug of rum.\n\n But the club could nowise settle, admitting all the fact,\n If the baby or the liquor had inspired the noble act,\n For \u2019twas proved he kept the liquor while he let the infant go,\n So the case of Mr. Carter was adjourned _in dubio_.\n\n Then the Secretary read us, in very moving tones,\n The wondrous case of courage of General Pompey Jones,\n Who found a hydrophobic dog upon a neighbour\u2019s farm,\n And roped his neck and led him off where he could do no harm.\n\n Then Brother Chunk, of Pewterville, declared that it was sad\n To have to state that Jones had no idea the dog was mad,\n And that in circles where he moved \u2019twas very freely said\n He\u2019d picked it up intending to come out one dog ahead.\n\n Then the next case reported in the doings of the day\n Was that of Huckleberry Pod, a man in Iowa,\n Who slopped into a raging flood to save a drowning maid,\n And did it like a beaver, as admiring neighbours said.\n\n Then Brother Chunk again let down his fist with startling bump,\n And said he\u2019d found that Mr. Pod refused to make the jump\n Till offered fifty dollars by the people of the town,\n And that then he wouldn\u2019t do it till he got the money down.\n\n Last of all we heard the instance of Golias Purple Fife,\n Who went into an awful well to save a fellow\u2019s life,\n A man who always spoke of Fife as of a blooming fool,\n And who recently had done him blind in trading for a mule;\n\n And on top of this, moreover, in addition, \u2019twas a fact,\n He refused a quarter-dollar for this noble manly act,\n And when they asked him what he\u2019d drink, or if he\u2019d take a bite,\n He jumped in silence on his mule and rode into the night.\n\n This case, in the opinion of the members of the club,\n Was much the most deserving, and the nearest to the hub;\n And each allowed he\u2019d never heard the like in all his life,\n So, by general acclamation, they bestowed the prize on Fife:\u2014\n\n A silver-plated snuff-box, with a compass in the lid,\n With the words, \u201c_If sold at auction always do as you are bid_,\u201d\n Which we sent him in a hurry ere it might be understood\n That this, too, was not an instance of the pure unmingled good.\n\n And these are the proceedings of these noble-minded seeds,\n Who make it their profession to discover virtuous deeds;\n And every day turns out a lot, but still \u2019tis on our mind\n That a case without a speck in it is very hard to find.\n\n\n\n\n THE COLOURED FORTUNE-HUNTER\n\n\n Pete Jonsing went to see the County Clerk\n About a marriage license, and the man\n Said unto him for fun, but seriously:\n \u201cI hope the bride possesses fifty cents,\n Because the Legislature\u2019s passed a law\n That any girl with less must not be wed.\u201d\n \u201cJis\u2019 go ahead wid dat \u2019ar paper, Boss,\u201d\n Peter replied; then whispered, bending down:\n \u201cDar\u2019s rumers\u2014and dey is reliable\u2014\n Dat de young woman dat I\u2019m goin\u2019 fur\n Has got two dollars and a quarter\u2014_shoa_.\n And dat\u2019s de reason wy I marries her.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n PENN\n ON A TEXT BY ROBERT BURDETTE\n\n\n When William Penn appeared before King Charles\n To get the charter of his Promised Land\n In Pennsylvani\u00e1,\n \u2019Twas in his usual free-and-easy style,\n With hands in pockets and his hat on side\u2014\n Singing _Lard-dardy day_!\n _Let us drink and be merry, laugh, sing, and rejoice,_\n _With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice,_\n _Merry-ton-ton-ton ta-lay!_\n\n King Charles at once removed his feathered tile.\n \u201cKeep on your hat, young man!\u201d said William Penn,\n \u201cIt is our Quaker way;\n And people will not know that you are bald;\n Be quite at home to make your guests at home\u2014\n Singing _Lard-dardy day_!\n _This changeable world to our joys is unjust,_\n _All treasure\u2019s uncertain, so down with your dust,_\n _Merry-ton-ton-ton ta-lay!_\u201d\n\n \u201cIt is the custom here,\u201d the King replied,\n \u201cFor only one to cover at a time;\n This is the courtly way.\u201d\n \u201cThen you should have more covers,\u201d warbled Penn.\n \u201cWarm people\u2019s heads to make them merry men\u2014\n Singing _Lard-dardy day_!\n _And in frolics dispose of your shillings and pence,_\n _Since we all shall be past it a hundred years hence,_\n _Merry-ton-ton-ton ta-lay_!\n\n \u201c\u2019Tis a queer world, and faith! I do not lay\n My hat around, loose, in a domicile\n Where I don\u2019t know the way,\n Unless some party gives a check for it;\n I\u2019ve travelled some\u2014I have\u2014and can\u2019t be bit\u2014\n Singing _Lard-dardy day_!\n Since, despite your invention, and learning, and sense,\n You\u2019ll be _non est inventus_ a hundred years hence,\n _Merry-ton-ton-ton ta-lay!_\u201d\n\n \u201cOdds-fish!\u201d exclaimed his Royal Majesty,\n \u201cHe talks full well, but as it seems to me,\n According to our way,\n There\u2019s a tremendous pig in this same Penn.\u201d\n \u201cBravo, young man!\u201d said William; \u201ctry again\u2014\n Singing _Lard-dardy day_!\n You have brought me a terrible one on the nob,\n But I bear you no malice, not being a snob,\n _Merry-ton-ton-ton ta-lay!_\u201d\n\n And thus it is that history is writ,\n And thus it is good men are slandered sore\n From ever till to-day.\n Some writer pastes a joke; it may remain\n Safe in a corner from Time\u2019s wind and rain\n Till Time has rolled away.\n _So, hurrah for King Charles! and hurrah, too, for Penn!_\n _And all such and similar excellent men!_\n _Merry-ton-ton-ton ta-lay!_\n\n\n\n\n BALLAD OF THE FOXES\n\n\n There is a golden glory in my song\n As of a picture by Carpaccio,\n For it is of the early morning-time\n When every man believed with tender faith\n That animals could talk\u2014oh, lovely lore!\n So, lady, listen as the lay runs on.\n\n There was a goose, and she was travelling\n Across the land for her dyspepsia,\n And at the noontide sat to rest herself\n In a small thicket, when there came along\n Two starving foxes, perishing to find\n Something which was not too-too-utter-ish\n To serve for dinner. And as they were wild\n For want of food, it was but natural\n That they should likewise be confounded cross;\n Oh, lady, listen as the lay runs on!\n\n And as they halted near the thicket, one\n Of them observed, \u201cIf you were half as sharp\n As books make out, you would not now, I\u2019ll bet,\n Be ravenous enough to gnaw the grass.\u201d\n \u201cAnd if you were as big, or half as big,\n As you believe you are,\u201d snarled Number Two,\n \u201cYou\u2019d be a lion of the largest size\n _Minus_ his roar, and pluck, and dignity.\u201d\n Oh, listen, lady, as the lay runs on!\n\n \u201cPlease to observe I want no impudence\n From any fifteen-nickel quadruped\n Of your peculiar shape,\u201d snapped Number One.\n \u201cAnd if you give me but another note\n Of your chin-music,\u201d snarled out Number Two,\n \u201cI\u2019ll make a wreck of you, you wretched beast,\n Beyond insurance\u2014bet your tail on that!\u201d\n Oh, lady, listen as the lay runs on!\n\n \u201cYou are the champion snob of all the beasts!\u201d\n \u201cAnd you the upper scum of all the frauds.\u201d\n \u201cYou are the weathercock of infamy.\u201d\n \u201cAnd you the lightning-rod of falsehood\u2019s spire.\u201d\n \u201cYou are a thief!\u201d \u201cDitto.\u201d \u201cYou lie.\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t.\u201d\n \u201cShut up, you goy!\u201d And hearing this, the goose\n Could bear no more, but walking from the bush,\n Put on expression most benevolent,\n And said, \u201cOh, gentlemen, for shame! for shame!\n I\u2019ll settle this dispute: in the first place\n Let me remark, as an impartial friend\u2014\u2014\u201d\n Oh, listen, lady, as the lay runs on!\n\n But she did not remark, because they made\n A rush at her and caught her by the throat,\n And ate her up; and as they picked their teeth\n With toothpicks made of her last pin-feathers,\n The first observed, and that quite affably,\n \u201cOnly a goose would ever make attempt\n To settle a dispute when foxes fight\u201d\u2014\n Oh, lady, listen as the lay runs on!\n\n \u201cAnd while I have a very great respect\n For any peacemaker,\u201d said Number Two,\n \u201cI would suggest that I invariably\n Have found, if they be really honest folk\n Who interfere with reprobates like us,\n They\u2019re always eaten up; there is, I think,\n More clanship between devils any day\n Than among all the angels. Interest\n Binds us together, and howe\u2019er we fight\n Among ourselves to ease our bitter blood,\n We do not hate each other half as much\n As we do hate the good. Neighbours who fight\n Can generally take most perfect care,\n Not only of themselves, but of the goose\n Who sticks her bill into the fuss they make.\n This banquet now adjourns until it meets\n Another wing\u00e9d angel of the sort\n Which it has just discussed\u2014may it be soon!\u201d\n Lady, this lyric runs no further on.\n\n\n\n\n EST MODUS IN REBUS\n A NARRATIVE OF NEW YORK\n\n\n I would not say to man, \u201cDon\u2019t spread yourself\n To win the admiration of mankind,\u201d\n Since he who never spreads can never shine,\n And he who never shines is never seen,\n And he who\u2019s never seen is counted out\n In the great game of life; yet what is spread\n Too thin entirely, when the sun shines out\n Must soon dry up and be a fly-away.\n\n There was a man who took his daily dine\n At a delightful _table d\u2019h\u00f4te_, where he\n Was waited on by an obedient youth,\n Who, as a waiter, was a paragon\n Of quick politeness. He\u2019d apologise\n If the sun shone too much, or if it rained,\n And say in simple faith that he would speak\n To the proprietor and have it changed,\n Then vanish like an elfin fly-away.\n\n The vulgar boarder at this _table d\u2019h\u00f4te_\n Was one who greatly loved to spread himself\n And play the imperial before the rest;\n And finding that the waiter cushioned it,\n Sat down on him severely. Every time\n He spoke he called him names, and said that he\n Forthwith would punish him in cruel wise\n Unless he tortled faster, or unless\n The steak was better cooked. And then he\u2019d swear\u2014\n Oh, death and dandelions! how he would swear!\n Till all the blood of all the boarders round\n Was almost turned to cherry-water ice,\n And each and all wished they could fly away.\n\n And yet this waiter had a fund reserved\n Of pretty stout pugnacity and pride,\n And every time the boarder called him \u201cfool,\u201d\n Or \u201clow-born rooster,\u201d he would add it up\n To the preceding pile of expletives,\n And think it over. He did not forget\n A single word. Of all the abusatives\n There was not one which proved a fly-away.\n\n At last the crisis came, when one fine day,\n For some imagined fault, the boarder said\n Unto the waiter, that unless he stirred\n A little quicker he would bung his eye,\n And take him by the legs _instanter_-ly\n And wipe the floor with him. But with that word\n He overdrew the account. That was the fly\n Which overset the camel, and the drop\n Which made the pail slop over. For the youth\n On that let out his Injun. All at once\n He turned both red and white, as fat and lean\n Are seen in a beefsteak before \u2019tis cooked,\n And blew his soul out in a fly-away.\n\n \u201cYou misspelled copy of a gentleman\n With all the meaning lost!\u2014if you dare call\n Me names again as you have often done,\n I\u2019ll bung your pallid eyes. You\u2019ve said too much,\n So now just dwindle down. I\u2019ve always been\n Obedient and polite, and served you well,\n As you were never served by any one,\n And all you ever gave me was abuse,\n And all because you were a vulgar fool.\n Now stop your noise, or I will sling you out\n Of yonder window for a fly-away!\u201d\n\n The boarder rose as if in roaring wrath,\n The waiter jerked his linen jacket off\n And fairly danced about in gypsy style,\n Impatient for a fight. But then the guest\n As if with self-command restrained himself,\n And said to the assembled company,\n \u201cThere must be lines in all society\n To regulate our conduct. Lines, I say,\n Which separate us from the vulgar herd,\n With whom we may not fight. I draw the line\n At waiters.\u201d Here he looked about the room\n To be applauded; but the only sound\n Which rose was that of a tremendous slap\n On his own face, and then a mighty roar\n Of laughter from the happy company,\n For all his valour was a fly-away.\n\n So he sat down too terrified to speak;\n And then the waiter took a dripping jug\n Of ice-water and poured out every drop\n Upon his head, yea, water, ice, and all;\n And then that boarder burst in bitter tears,\n And blubbered like a boy, while all the room\n Rang with redoubled laughter. Then a guest\n Proposed a vote of thanks to him who had\n Put down a public nuisance, and the next\n Passed round a hat and took collection up\n To give the waiter as a small reward\n For punishing a coward. Then he rose,\n And since that hour has been a fly-away.\n\n\n\n\n THE MASHER\n\n\n The word to \u201cmash,\u201d in the sense of causing love or attracting\n by a glance or fascinating look, came into ordinary slang from\n the American stage. Thus an actress was often fined for\n \u201cmashing\u201d or smiling at men in the audience. It was introduced\n by the well-known gypsy family of actors, C., among whom Romany\n was habitually spoken. The word \u201cmasher\u201d or \u201cmash\u201d means in that\n tongue to allure, delude, or entice. It was doubtless much aided\n in its popularity by its quasi-identity with the English word. A\n girl could be called a masher as she could be called a\n man-killer, or killing. But there can be no doubt as to the\n gypsy origin of \u201cmash\u201d as used on the stage. I am indebted for\n this information to the late well-known _impresario_ Palmer of\n New York, and I made a note of it years before the term had\n become at all popular.\n\n It was in the Indian summer-time, when life is tender brown,\n And people in the country talk of going into town,\n When the nights are crisp and cooling, though the sun is warm by day,\n In the home-like town of Glasgow, in the State of Iowa;\n\n It was in the railroad deep\u00f4 of that greatly-favoured zone,\n That a young man met a stranger, who was still not all unknown,\n For they had run-countered casual in riding in the car,\n And the latter to the previous had offered a cigar.\n\n Now as the primal gentleman was nominated Gale,\n It follows that the secondary man was Mr. Dale;\n This is called poetic justice when arrangements fit in time,\n And Fate allows the titles to accommodate in rhyme.\n\n And a lovely sense of autumn seemed to warble in the air;\n Boys with baskets selling peaches were vibratin\u2019 everywhere,\n While in the mellow distance folks were gettin\u2019 in their corn,\n And the biggest yellow punkins ever seen since you were born.\n\n Now a gradual sensation emotioned this our Gale,\n That he\u2019d seldom seen so fine a man for cheek as Mr. Dale;\n Yet simultaneous he felt that he was all the while\n The biggest dude and cock-a-hoop within a hundred mile.\n\n For the usual expression of his quite enormous eyes\n Was that of two ripe gooseberries who\u2019ve been decreed a prize;\n Like a goose apart from berries, too\u2014though not removed from sauce\u2014\n He conversed on lovely Woman as if he were all her boss.\n\n Till, in fact, he stated plainly that, between his face and cash,\n There was not a lady living whom he was not sure to mash;\n The wealthiest, the loveliest, of families sublime,\n At just a single look from him must all give in in time.\n\n Now when our Dale had got along so far upon the strain,\n They saw a Dream of Loveliness descending from the train,\n A proud and queenly beauty of a transcendental face,\n With gloves unto her shoulders, and the most expensive lace.\n\n All Baltimore and New Orleans seemed centered into one,\n As if their stars of beauty had been fused into a sun;\n But, oh! her frosty dignity expressed a kind of glow\n Like sunshine when thermometers show thirty grades below.\n\n But it flashed a gleam of shrewdness into the head of Gale,\n And with aggravatin\u2019 humour he exclaimed to Mr. Dale,\n \u201cSince every girl\u2019s a cricket-ball and you\u2019re the only bat,\n If you want to show you\u2019re champion, go in and mash on that.\n\n \u201cI will bet a thousand dollars, and plank them on the rub,\n That if you try it thither, you will catch a lofty snub.\n I don\u2019t mean but what a lady may reply to what you say,\n But I bet you cannot win her into wedding in a day.\u201d\n\n A singular emotion enveloped Mr. Dale;\n One would say he seemed confuseled, for his countenance was pale:\n At first there came an angry look, and when that look did get,\n He larft a wild and hollow larf, and said, \u201cI take the debt.\n\n \u201cThe brave deserve the lovely\u2014every woman may be won;\n What men have fixed before us may by other men be done.\n You will lose your thousand dollars. For the first time in my life\n I have gazed upon a woman whom I wish to make my wife.\u201d\n\n Like a terrier at a rabbit, with his hat upon his eyes\n Mr. Dale, the awful masher, went head-longing at the prize,\n Looking rather like a party simply bent to break the peace,\n Mr. Gale, with smiles, expected just a yell for the police.\n\n Oh! what are women made of? Oh! what can women be?\n From Eves to Jersey Lilies what bewildering sights we see!\n One listened on the instant to all the Serpent said;\n The other paid attention right away to Floral Ned.\n\n With a blow as with a hammer the intruder broke the ice,\n And the proud and queenly beauty seemed to think it awful nice.\n Mr. Gale, as he beheld it, with a trembling heart began\n To realise he really was a most astonished man.\n\n Shall I tell you how he wooed her? shall I tell you how he won?\n How they had a hasty wedding ere the evening was done?\n For when all things were considered, the fond couple thought it best\u2014\n Such things are not uncommon in the wild and rapid West.\n\n Dale obtained the thousand dollars, and then vanished with the dream.\n Gale stayed in town with sorrow, like a spoon behind the cream;\n Till one morning in the paper he read, though not in rhymes,\n How a certain blooming couple had been married fifty times!\n\n How they wandered o\u2019er the country; how the bridegroom used to bet\n He would wed the girl that evening,\u2014how he always pulled the debt;\n How his eyes were large and greensome; how, in fact, to end the tale,\n Their very latest victim was a fine young man named Gale.\n\n\n\n\n ARIZONA JOHN\n\n\n When in a situation it always pays the best\n To have your wits about you, for it helps the interest;\n And a man gets so encouraged by succeedin\u2019 when he tries,\n That the more you crowd him downward, the more he\u2019s bound to rise.\n\n As when near Tres Alamos, while workin\u2019 at his mine,\n John Lyons, late of Tombstone, without the least design\n To involve himself whatever in any kind of tricks,\n Got inside an unprovided and a most unpleasant fix.\n\n John Lyons, late of Tombstone, had but just put in a blast,\n When he saw four buck Apaches approximatin\u2019 fast\n Upon their headlong horses in a rackaloose career,\n And every one preceded by a long projectin\u2019 spear:\n\n He had planted all the powder, and was just atop the shaft,\n While the foemen kept a-comin\u2019 like as they was telegrapht.\n To run was to be taken, and to stay was to be slew\u2014\n And in such a situation how-whatever could he do?\n\n Bein\u2019 quick upon the trigger Lyons did not stop to choose,\n For a match was in his fingers, so he lighted up the fuse,\n And dropped behind a boulder for to disabuse their aim,\n When at him like a sheriff\u2019s writ full dig the Injuns came.\n\n He had timed the fuse so nicely that the \u2019Paches reached the rock\n Exactly at the nick of the explosionary shock:\n Bang! How the big rock busted as the powder gave a flare!\n While a rain of stones and gravel went a-thunderin\u2019 through the air.\n\n It was four red Apaches who also had a rise,\n And started for the hunting-grounds on horseback thro\u2019 the skies;\n Or as if they had the notion, but recalled it there and then,\n For they speedily descended as four non-existent men.\n\n John Lyons, late of Tombstone, just down behind his rock,\n Escaped the influential effect of such a shock,\n And examinin\u2019 the prospect, he very plainly sees\n He has worked the blast quite perfect\u2014likewise slammed his enemies.\n\n When narratin\u2019 the adventure which I\u2019ve chanted in my song,\n If he terms them \u201cblasted Injuns\u201d no one calls his language strong\u2014\n For their hopes were surely blasted which they fondly reckoned on,\n And with patent giant-powder by this Arizona John.\n\n\n\n\n THE BALLAD OF CHARITY\n\n\n It was in a pleasant deep\u00f4, sequestered from the rain,\n That many weary passengers were waitin\u2019 for the train;\n Piles of quite expensive baggage, many a gorgeous portmant\u00f3,\n Ivory-handled umberellas made a most touristic show.\n\n Whereunto there came a person, very humble was his mien,\n Who took an observation of the interestin\u2019 scene;\n Closely scanned the umberellas, watched with joy the mighty trunks,\n And observed that all the people were securin\u2019 Pullman bunks:\n\n Who was followed shortly after by a most unhappy tramp,\n Upon whose features poverty had jounced her iron stamp;\n And to make a clear impression as bees sting you while they buzz,\n She had hit him rather harder than she generally does.\n\n For he was so awful ragged, and in parts so awful bare,\n That the folks were quite repulsioned to behold him begging there;\n And instead of drawing currency from out their pocket-books,\n They drew themselves asunder with aversionary looks.\n\n Sternly gazed the first newcomer on the unindulgent crowd,\n Then in tones which pierced the deep\u00f4 he solilicussed aloud:\u2014\n \u201cI hev trevelled o\u2019er this cont\u2019nent from Quebec to Bogot\u00e1w,\n But setch a set of scallawags as these I never saw.\n\n \u201cYe are wealthy, ye are gifted, ye have house and lands and rent,\n Yet unto a suff\u2019rin\u2019 mortal ye will not donate a cent;\n Ye expend your missionaries to the heathen and the Jew,\n But there isn\u2019t any heathen that is half as small as you.\n\n \u201cYe are lucky\u2014ye hev cheque-books and deeposits in the bank,\n And ye squanderate your money on the titled folks of rank;\n The onyx and the sardonyx upon your garments shine,\n An\u2019 ye drink at every dinner p\u2019r\u2019aps a dollar\u2019s wuth of wine.\n\n \u201cYe are goin\u2019 for the summer to the islands by the sea,\n Where it costs four dollars daily\u2014setch is not for setch as me;\n Iv\u2019ry-handled umberellers do not come into my plan,\n But I kin give a dollar to this suff\u2019rin\u2019 fellow-man.\n\n \u201cHand-bags made of Rooshy leather are not truly at my call,\n Yet in the eyes of Mussy I am richer \u2019en you all,\n For I kin give a dollar wher\u2019 you dare not stand a dime,\n And never miss it nother, nor regret it any time.\u201d\n\n Sayin\u2019 this he drew a wallet from the inner of his vest,\n And gave the tramp a daddy, which it was his level best;\n Other people havin\u2019 heard him soon to charity inclined\u2014\n One giver soon makes twenty if you only get their wind.\n\n The first who gave the dollar led the other one about,\n And at every contribution he a-raised a joyful shout,\n Exclaimin\u2019 how \u2019twas noble to relieviate distress,\n And remarkin\u2019 that our duty is our present happiness.\n\n Thirty dollars altogether were collected by the tramp,\n When he bid \u2019em all good evenin\u2019 and went out into the damp,\n And was followed briefly after by the one who made the speech,\n And who showed by good example how to practise as to preach.\n\n Which soon around the corner the couple quickly met,\n And the tramp produced the specie for to liquidate his debt;\n And the man who did the preachin\u2019 took his twenty of the sum,\n Which you see that out of thirty left a tenner for the bum.\n\n And the couple passed the summer at Bar Harbour with the rest,\n Greatly changed in their appearance and most elegantly dressed.\n Any fowl with change of feathers may a brilliant bird become:\n Oh, how hard is life for many! oh, how sweet it is for some!\n\n\n\n\n MULTUM IN PARVO\n\n\n \u201cGreat thoughts are oft expressed in fewest words,\u201d\n And I remember how long years ago,\n When a great lady in her diary\n Of a short visit to the Scottish land,\n Recorded of a sorrowful event,\n \u201cTo-day poor little Vicky, by mischance,\n Sat on a wasps\u2019 nest.\u201d All the newspapers\n Declared it was a perfect masterpiece\n Of excellent conciseness. Yet I think\n It was outdone by a Red Indian\u2014\n One of the Quoddy tribe\u2014who did the same;\n Since he, like \u201clittle Vicky,\u201d also sat\n Upon a seat as hot; and when he rose,\n Briefly exclaimed in his vernacular:\u2014\n \u201c_H\u2019lam-kikqu\u2019!_\u201d and being asked what this\n Might mean, responded in the English tongue:\n \u201c_Heap hell!_\u201d O reader! if the soul of wit\n Be brevity, this Indian was there.\n\n\n\n\n THE ORGANIST OF BERGAMO\n\n\n \u201cFor blowing is not playing on the flute,\n To do that well you must put fingers to\u2019t.\u201d\n\n GERMAN PROVERB.\n\n This is a Merry Tale of Bergamo.\n\n It chanced in Fifteen Hundred Twenty-Eight\n [As I do find the fact recorded in\n A pleasing book of Sixteen Thirty-Six\n Entitled _Scelta di Facetie_\u2014\n A little yellow, quaint, italic tome,\n Which looks as if it were behind the age,\n And would have been black letter if it could]\n That in fair Venice raged a pestilence\n Whereof in time full many people died,\n And among these a trusty servitor\n Who blew the bellows for the organist\n All in the great Cathedral of Saint Mark,\n Whose billowy pavement truly seems to roll\n In time and measure with the music sweet,\n So perfect were the harmonies of Art\n Which men imagined in the olden time.\n\n Now as this man had died while at his work,\n Even while blowing a _Magnificat_\n All in the holy church, it was adjudged\n That he almost deserved to be a saint.\n And he who preached the sermon over him\n Said that \u201chis soul had risen on the notes\n Of the grand anthem which he had inspired,\n And having reached the Music all divine\n Had softly sunk, as light is lost in light,\n Into the pure Celestial.\u201d Here he stopped.\n Men were great preachers in the olden time.\n\n It happened that a certain Giannolo,\n _Facchino Bergamasco_, or a man\n From Bergamo, a porter by his trade,\n Who carried heavy burdens, yet withal\n Was not o\u2019erburdened with a load of wit,\n Hearing this sermon, got it in his head\u2014\n And no great wonder either\u2014that the late\n Departed bellows-blower must have been\n The Chief Musician of the Holy House;\n And knowing that the man who bloweth up\n A pair of bagpipes also is the one\n Who plays upon the same\u2014drew inference\n That the deceased was the true organist,\n And he who played thereon his humble aid,\n Who only worked to keep the tune in time.\n\n Now being smitten with a deep desire\n To rise in life and also to be called\n A Child of Art\u2014with a nice salary\u2014\n And have a sermon preached o\u2019er him when dead,\n Giannolo unto the Bishop went,\n And made a great entreaty to be placed\n Among the holy followers of Saint Mark,\n And that the aim of his ambition was\n _Alzare i mantici quando suonava_\n _gli organi_\u2014that\u2019s to say:\n \u201cTo lift the bellows when the organ played.\u201d\n And as he was a stout and lusty knave\n Who might be useful in a hundred ways,\n They gladly took him on, so there he stayed\n Blowing the bellows faithfully in time.\n\n I ween there is not in all Italy\n A man\u2014unless he came from Bergamo\u2014\n Who could have blown an organ seven years\n In the full faith that he was playing it,\n And was indeed the real organist.\n Yet this, in fact, unless the legend lies,\n Was what befell Giannolo. By this time,\n Having laid by a very handsome sum,\n And being well attired though modestly,\n As is becoming to a Son of Art,\n He went a-visiting his native place,\n Where all who were related unto him\u2014\n That is to say about one-half the town\u2014\n Did greatly marvel at his handsome clothes\n And at his air of stately dignity,\n But most of all when he informed them that\n He was no more a porter: he had felt\n Immortal longings in him to arise\n Above that vulgar calling, and to soar\n \u201c\u2019Mid palpitations sweet and pleasures soft,\n The manifestations of that beauteous life\n Diffused unseen throughout eternal Space\u201d\n Which men call Music; and that he had risen\n Even to a monthly salary of ten francs,\n Wherewith were many pleasing perquisites;\n And that he played the organ in Saint Mark\u2019s,\n As all the world allowed, in perfect time.\n\n Up rose a buzz of strangest wonderment,\n Or, as \u2019tis writ, _Di che restarono_\n _Pi\u00f9 maravigliati_; for they all\n Were much amazed that such a common man\u2014\n _Si vile e si rozzo_\u2014such a boor\u2014\n Had risen to the pinnacle of Art\n In Venice, where all Art was at its height,\n And gained the crown of glory\u2014_Iddio_!\n \u201cTen francs a month besides the perquisites!\u201d\n They bowed before him with deep reverence,\n Hoping he\u2019d stay with them a little time.\n\n Then some one spoke with hesitating tone,\n As if in fear to take a liberty,\n And said: \u201cYour Excellence\u2014if we might dare\u2014\n Since we would celebrate the kind return\n Of such an Honour to our noble town,\n Would you not grace the occasion, and increase\n Our joy and sense of deep respectfulness,\n By playing Vespers for us in the Dome\n On Sunday next?\u201d Giannolo bowed low,\n And in a speech adorned with many flowers,\n Which he had culled from sermons in Saint Mark,\n Acceded gracefully to their request,\n And said he would be there to play, in time.\n When Sunday came there came with it a crowd\n Such as Bergamo never saw before,\n For in her streets and past her palaces\n Thousands in holiday attire swept on,\n And even afar there was a thundering roar,\n From time to time, which rolled from square to square,\n As when the incoming ocean, with a tide\n Urged by a tempest, breaks among the rocks.\n Yea, there were many\u2014_tanto popolo_\u2014\n All that the church would hold, and then outside\n A vast, impatient, brilliant multitude,\n Such as had ne\u2019er been there at any time.\n\n And at the appointed hour Giannolo came,\n Rising before the people in his state,\n Waiting awhile the appearance of the man\n Who was to play the organ while he\u2014blew!\n And all the congregation waited too,\n All staring steadily at the great man\n In anxious expectation, till at last\n Giannolo from the pulpit cried aloud:\n \u201cWhere is the man who is to touch the keys?\n What is the use of making music, hey\u2014\n And filling up the thing with melody,\n As I have come to do, unless there be\n Some one to click the bones and let it out?\n You don\u2019t suppose that I can raise the wind,\n And steer, and sail the ship as well, my friends.\n Such things were ne\u2019er beheld at any time.\u201d\n\n There was an instant\u2019s silence\u2014deep and strange;\n In all the great cathedral rang no sound.\n All stared at one another open-eyed,\n Or at Giannolo\u2014just as if some power\n Before unknown in life had seized on them\n With a tremendous sense of dire amaze,\n Not knowing what the devil it could mean;\n When all at once they _took_\u2014and from them all\n There rose a roar of laughter like a crash\n Of thunder, and so near it that one seemed\n To miss the lightning\u2014or, as I might say,\n \u2019Twas like a flash of sound\u2014and then again\n It came re-echoed from the multitude\n Gathered outside, as the electric peal\n Resounds, repeated by the mountain tops.\n Yea, such a peal of laughter as the book\n Declares \u201cat vespers ne\u2019er was heard before,\u201d\n And ne\u2019er again will be at any time.\n\n * * * * *\n\n _Moral._ I pray you think upon it well.\n There are full many people in this world\n Who think that they are wondrous wise in ART,\n And who, as Critics, write about the same\n In transcendental phrase with capitals,\n And call it Faith, and Love, and Heaven knows what,\n And cannot think of it without a gasp\n And uttering phrases silly, mystical,\u2014\n Because they are the empty, windy ones,\n Inflating and inflated, who but blow\n The bellows of the organ, yet believe\n That they are leaders in the Realm of Art!\n\n\n\n\n THE GOTH AND THE PIGEON\n\n\n Among the merry tales of olden time\n Which are still current in fair Italy\n Are many told in taverns or in type\n About the rude barbarians of the North\n Who cross the Alps, even as they did of yore,\n When they invaded fertile Lombardy,\n And helped themselves to all which pleased their eyes,\n And paid for it in iron and with blood:\n Those times are fled, but Northmen still are here;\n States fall, arts fade, but English yet abound,\n And Austrian-Germans and Americans\n Stalk proudly through the streets with Baedeker,\n Or Murray, with the very gait and air\n Of their barbarian ancestors\u2014although\n They are cleaner washed and more completely shaved\u2014\n Bet high upon the latter; for as once\n They came to rob the natives of their goods,\n The latter now do live by spoiling them.\n And thus strange things do happen in this world.\n\n Thus we may note that all these foreigners,\n Be it the daintiest English dame alive,\n Or damsel born in fair America,\n Or Russians of a royal family,\n Or Frenchmen of the very noblest stock,\n Or Viennese as elegant and _fesch_[12]\n As even Viennese can be produced\u2014\n Wherein they wellnigh rival Baltimore\u2014\n Are still regarded by the Italian with\n A doubtful smile, who as he smiles exclaims:\n \u201c_Sono forestieri_\u201d\u2014which indeed\n Means \u201cThey are foreigners\u201d\u2014and yet the word\n Comes from _Foresto_\u2014savage\u2014desert\u2014wild\u2014\n And so do ancient thorns live round the rose.\n And thus strange things do happen in the world.\n\n Now it befell that in the Lombard time\n When Dieterich-Theodoric was king,\n And from Ravenna ruled all Italy,\n The court religion was the Arian,\n To which men nowadays an Unit add,\n Yet do not add by the process\u2014that I see\u2014\n Aught to its value; but the odd result\n Was that the Gothic warriors nothing knew\n About the mystery of the Trinity,\u2014\n Nay, they were even far more ignorant\n Than was the English curate, who when asked\n What he did understand by the Holy Ghost,\n Replied: \u201cI am not sure, but I believe\n It is a kind of pigeon.\u201d These poor Goths\n Had never learned so much as this youth knew.\n And thus strange things do happen in the world.\n\n Now it befell that once a Visigoth\n Stately, while all unconscious of his state,\n And proud while nothing thinking of his pride,\n Went stalking onwards through the streets of Rome,\n Unheeding all the casual passers-by\n Who turned to look at him\u2014as a grave bull\n Might walk through many sheep\u2014or as my lord\n Guy de Plantagenet just now walked by\n Before my window, where I writing sit,\n In Florence\u2014true he came _bien \u00e0 propos_.\n And thus strange things do happen in this world.\n\n Well then, this fierce barbarian from the North,\n Who as I said was densely ignorant\n Of Trinitarian theology,\n Was not much further in the Italian tongue,\n Seeing that that which he essayed to speak\n Was of the _pidgin_ kind,\u2014oh, marvel strange!\n Oh, wondrous miracle!\u2014lo, how the Muse\n Brings up that word to keep me to my tale!\n Ah! what strange things do happen in this world!\n\n Now as he strode along the Roman street,\n With thoughts of dinner flitting through his soul,\n Lifting his eyes he saw upon a sign\n The picture of a dove with outspread wings\n Above the door of a _trattoria_,\n Which means a place where you can treat yourself\n To what you want\u2014that is, a restaurant.\n And \u2019neath the bird he read inscribed in gold:\n _Spirito Santo_; and he gazed at it,\n And took an object-lesson, and exclaimed:\n \u201cSo _that_ is the Italian for a dove!\n I must remember it.\u201d So in he went\n Repeating ever to himself the words\n \u201c_Spirito Santo! Santo Spirito!_\u201d\n Those who o\u2019erheard him deemed him a devout\n And fervid follower of the Trinity.\n And thus strange things do happen in the world.\n\n And having sat him down, the waiter came\n And asked His Excellence what he would have;\n To which his Gothic Excellence replied:\n \u201cI want a bottle of your noblest wine,\n With it a soup of highest quality,\n And after that a roast San\u2019 Spirito!\u201d\n \u201cA roasted\u2014WHAT? Signore,\u201d cried the man,\n As one who had not rightly understood,\n While all the guests around did glare amazed.\n \u201cI said,\u201d resumed the Northern warrior,\n \u201cA _Spirito Santo_, such as you have got\n Upon your sign outside\u2014a _bird_, you know,\n That moves its wings like this\u201d\u2014and here he moved\n His bended arms like wings, both up and down,\n While with his voice he murmured _Coo-oo-oo!_\n Or what is called in French a _roucoulement_,\n Or _girren_ in the German. Hearing this,\n All who were present promptly understood;\n And though they all were naturally polite,\n And never laughed at any foreigner\n Before his face, because he erred in words,\n This was too\u2014too\u2014too much, and all burst out\n In a tremendous\u2014an Homeric roar.\n They drew the line at pigeons; and the Goth\n When \u2019twas explained laughed loudest of them all;\n And thus it was he learned another word.\n And thus strange things do happen in the world.\n\n-----\n\n[12] A very peculiar Viennese slang word, signifying stylish or elegant.\nIt is supposed to be an abbreviation of the mispronunciation of the\nEnglish word fashionable\u2014_Germanic\u00e9_, _feshionable_.\n\n\n\n\n REFLECTIONS IN A PRINTING-OFFICE\n\n\n Faust means a fist\u2014a fist can hit, I ween:\n Faust made the greatest hit that e\u2019er was seen.\n\n I know not if \u2019twas Guttenberg\n Or Faust who first began\n To print\u2014the honour was too great\n For any single man.\n\n Printing is called the Art of Arts,\n And typos then are artists\u2014right\u2014\n They are the nobler counterparts\n Of those who work in Black and White.\n\n\n\n\n APPENDIX\n\n\n ORBUS IN TACTU MAINET.\u2014P. 2\n\nTHERE were in Philadelphia, forty years ago, two sailors\u2019 groggeries in\nWater Street, both having the sign of The Boy and Barrel, derived from\nthe infant Bacchus. One of these had for motto the words exactly as here\nmisspelt and divided.\n\n TIME FOR US TO GO.\u2014P. 64\n\nIn one of his admirable papers, \u201cAt the Sign of the Ship,\u201d published in\nthe _Cornhill Magazine_, Mr. Andrew Lang, in discussing Sea Songs, wrote\nthe following:\u2014\n\n\u201cIn an unpublished play by Mr. Henley and Mr. R. L. Stevenson, a play\ncalled _Admiral Guinea_, that veteran ruffian, Mr. Pew of Treasure\nIsland, makes his appearance. He has been a sailor of Admiral Guinea\u2019s\nin the slave trade, and he haunts the evangelical and remorseful Admiral\nlike an evil conscience, singing snatches of the following \u2018Slaver\u2019s\nSong.\u2019 Mr. Henley has kindly copied out the whole piece, which was\npublished in Mr. Leland\u2019s \u2018Captain Jonas Fisher\u2019 in _Temple Bar_ about\nfourteen years ago. Whether the ballad is traditional and collected by\nMr. Leland, or whether to himself is due the great credit of the\nauthorship, I am not aware.\u201d\n\nTruly I am not the author of the song which I picked up in Philadelphia\nbefore the War, nor do I know who wrote it. I am tolerably certain,\nhowever, that I, having slightly retouched it, republished it in _Temple\nBar_ as quoted. There are, however, others besides Mr. Lang who think I\nwrote it, so I give it here in order to make truth known, but chiefly\nbecause it is in keeping with other specimens of sailors\u2019 lyrical\nfolk-lore in these pages, and will be acceptable to all who like such\nballads.\n\n SAMUEL JACKSON.\u2014P. 99\n\n\u201cAnd of the heathen natives with their suppositious wiles.\u201d\n\nI once crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel, sharing my state-room\nwith a veteran sea-captain who had been for forty years in the whaling\nservice. He had an inexhaustible stock of sea-folk-lore, which he freely\nimparted to me who was an eager listener, and as the voyage lasted\n_thirty-five_ days I had opportunity to gather much. I am indebted to\nhim for this amusing interchange of words. When telling me that he once\nwent incognito to revisit his old home in Connecticut he said, \u201cI passed\nunder a superstitious name.\u201d\n\n THE END\n _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_\n\n\n\n\n N E W N O V E L S.\n _At all the Libraries._\n\n\n JOHN DARKER By AUBREY LEE.\n A ROMANCE OF DIJON By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS.\n POSTE RESTANTE By C. Y. HARGREAVES.\n MARGARET DRUMMOND By SOPHIE F. F. VEITCH.\n PAUL ROMER By C. Y. HARGREAVES.\n MY INDIAN SUMMER By Princess ALTIERI.\n THE CURB OF HONOUR By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS.\n BORN IN EXILE By GEORGE GISSING.\n THE GREAT CHIN EPISODE By PAUL CUSHING.\n THE LAST TOUCHES By Mrs. W. K. CLIFFORD.\n A TANGLED WEB By Lady LINDSAY.\n THE PHILOSOPHER\u2019S WINDOW By Lady LINDSAY.\n CAP AND GOWN COMEDY By ASCOTT R. HOPE.\n UNDER TWO SKIES By E. W. HORNUNG.\n\n\n\n ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK,\n SOHO SQUARE, LONDON.\n\n\n\n\n THE\n\n POETICAL\n\n WORKS\n\n OF\n\n SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart.\n\n Selected and Edited, with Introduction and Notes,\n\n BY\n\n ANDREW LANG\n\n In 2 vols., Crown 8vo, Price 5s. in Cloth; or 6s. Half-Bound\n\n Uniform with the Dryburgh Edition of the\n Waverley Novels\n\n\n ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK,\n SOHO SQUARE, LONDON.\n\n\n\n\n TRANSCRIBER NOTES\n\n\nMisspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.\n\nInconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.\n\n[The end of _Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land_, by Charles Godfrey\nLeland.]","title":"Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":33581}