THE FOOT-HILL RESORT

  Assembled in the parlor
    Of the place of last resort,
  The smiler and the snarler
    And the guests of every sort—
      The elocution chap
      With rhetoric on tap;
    The mimic and the funny dog;
    The social sponge; the money-hog;
      Vulgarian and dude;
      And the prude;
    The adiposing dame
    With pimply face aflame;
    The kitten-playful virgin—
      Vergin' on to fifty years;
    The solemn-looking sturgeon
      Of a firm of auctioneers;
    The widower flirtatious;
    The widow all too gracious;
  The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath.
  One assassin picks the banjo, and another picks his teeth.

  AT ANCHOR

  The soft asphaltum in the sun;
  Betrays a tendency to run;
  Whereas the dog that takes his way
  Across its course concludes to stay.

  THE IN-COMING CLIMATE

  Now o' nights the ocean breeze
    Makes the patient flinch,
  For that zephyr bears a sneeze
    In every cubic inch.
  Lo! the lively population
  Chorusing in sternutation
  A catarrhal acclamation!

  A LONG-FELT WANT

  Dimly apparent, through the gloom
  Of Market-street's opaque simoom,
  A queue of people, parti-sexed,
  Awaiting the command of "Next!"
  A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:
  "Teeth dusted nice—five cents a shine."

  TO THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

  Wide windy reaches of high stubble field;
  A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines;
  A wagon moving in a "cloud by day."
  Two city sportsmen with a dove between,
  Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep—
  A solitary dove, the only dove
  In twenty counties, and it sick, or else
  It were not there. Two guns that fire as one,
  With thunder simultaneous and loud;
  Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone!
  And later, in the gloaming, comes a man—
  The worthy local coroner is he,
  Renowned all thereabout, and popular
  With many a remain. All tenderly
  Compiling in a game-bag the dibris,
  He glides into the gloom and fades from sight.
  The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock,
  Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet,
  To die of age in some far foreign land.