To him in whom the love of Nature has
  Imperfectly supplanted the desire
  And dread necessity of food, your shore,
  Fair Oakland, is a terror. Over all
  Your sunny level, from Tamaletown
  To where the Pestuary's fragrant slime,
  With dead dogs studded, bears its ailing fleet,
  Broods the still menace of starvation. Bones
  Of men and women bleach along the ways
  And pampered vultures sleep upon the trees.
  It is a land of death, and Famine there
  Holds sovereignty; though some there be her sway
  Who challenge, and intrenched in larders live,
  Drawing their sustentation from abroad.
  But woe to him, the stranger! He shall die
  As die the early righteous in the bud
  And promise of their prime. He, venturesome
  To penetrate the wilds rectangular
  Of grass-grown ways luxuriant of blooms,
  Frequented of the bee and of the blithe,
  Bold squirrel, strays with heedless feet afar
  From human habitation and is lost
  In mid-Broadway. There hunger seizes him,
  And (careless man! deeming God's providence
  Extends so far) he has not wherewithal
  To bate its urgency. Then, lo! appears
  A mealery—a restaurant—a place
  Where poison battles famine, and the two,
  Like fish-hawks warring in the upper sky
  For that which one has taken from the deep,
  Manage between them to dispatch the prey.
  He enters and leaves hope behind. There ends
  His history. Anon his bones, clean-picked
  By buzzards (with the bones himself had picked,
  Incautious) line the highway. O, my friends,
  Of all felonious and deadlywise
  Devices of the Enemy of Souls,
  Planted along the ways of life to snare
  Man's mortal and immortal part alike,
  The Oakland restaurant is chief. It lives
  That man may die. It flourishes that life
  May wither. Its foundation stones repose
  On human hearts and hopes. I've seen in it
  Crabs stewed in milk and salad offered up
  With dressing so unholily compound
  That it included flour and sugar! Yea,
  I've eaten dog there!—dog, as I'm a man,
  Dog seethed in sewage of the town! No more—
  Thy hand, Dyspepsia, assumes the pen
  And scrawls a tortured "Finis" on the page.