To flatter your way to the goad of your hope,
    O plausible Mr. Perkins,
  You'll need ten tons of the softest soap
    And butter a thousand firkins.
  The soap you could put to a better use
    In washing your hands of ambition
  Ere the butter's used for cooking your goose
    To a beautiful brown condition.

  "The Railroad can't run Stanford." That is so—
    The tail can't curl the pig; but then, you know,
  Inside the vegetable-garden's pale
    The pig will eat more cabbage than the tail.

  When Sargent struts by all the lawmakers say:
    "Right—left!" It is fair to infer
  The right will get left, nor polar the day
    When he makes that thing to occur.

  Not so, not so, 'tis a joke, that cry—
    Foolish and dull and small:
  He so bores them for votes that they mean to imply
    He's a drill-Sargent, that is all.

  Gods! what a sight! Astride McClure's broad back
  Estee jogs round the Senatorial track,
  The crowd all undecided, as they pass,
  Whether to cheer the man or cheer the ass.
  They stop: the man to lower his feet is seen
  And the tired beast, withdrawing from between,
  Mounts, as they start again, the biped's neck,
  And scarce the crowd can say which one's on deck.