Who asks an ape to throw a coco-nut
Should take it not amiss if it be thrown
On his own head, as echo answers song.
There was a man named Jesse, who was called
The greatest liar in Connecticut.
For there are giants among the Brobdingnags.
It was a burning day, and William Hoop
Sat in the shade, when Jess came riding by.
When wolves run past your door-step, let them run.
But William cried, “Stop for a moment, Jess,
And tell us a big lie.” Jesse liked it not.
Ne’er ask a hangman how to tie a noose.
But hastily and sadly he replied,
“This is no time for lying now; oh, woe!”
A wanton widow may wear darkest weeds.
“Your Uncle Sol died very suddenly
An hour ago, and you would have me lie!”
Who weaveth nets is often caught in them.
“And I am riding for the coroner,
And for a coffin. William, learn from this
Never while living ask a man to lie.”
Then William ran in and told his wife,
And he and she and all the family
Burst into tears. The thistle soon bears thorns.
And in his waggon, leaving everything,
They posted off and on, four miles away.
The eagle hastens at the eaglet’s cry.
And when arrived they found the family
In the large kitchen, but in ne’er a grief.
It pains a man at times to miss his pain.
There Uncle Sol was buried—to the eyes,
In a great water-melon, lush and red.
Life’s sweetest things are water after all:
Which rises in a mist, and comes again
As rainy tears. And William almost wept
For rage, because he had no cause to cry.
But after this he never did entreat
Another man to tell a lie to him.
Burnt child seeks not a second time the fire.
The seek-no-further face of loveliness,
The perfect form of fawn-like springfulness,
Rich as a bonanza just unbound:
Catherine Van Peyster, of Fifth Avenue.
She lived a year in Europe—but for aye
In all the hearts of all who met her there;
And then her pa allowed her boundless cash,
Which she laid out in glorious works of art.
Such as the dream-like dresses made by Worth,
And heavenly hats by Virot, and all things
Refined, æsthetic, swell, and classical;
Yea, even a picture—she bought everything.
’Tis true it was a picture of herself,
And when she ordered it she simply said,
“I know that I am very beautiful,
My mirror tells me that—distinctively;
“But I am also very clever too,
For I am of a clever family,
Papa and sisters all are awful smart;
Now you must make it somehow sparkle out
“In what you paint. And as for me I guess
I’ll show you how to fix it—wait a bit.
Ain’t there a saint they call Saint Catherine?
One of my beaux, I think, once called me that.”
“Si, Illustrissima,” the artist said,
“Dere is a Santa Catarina, who
Is beautiful most of the oder sants,
Vitch giusto suit so lovely mad as you!
“And she do always hold opon a vheel.”
“I see!” cried Miss Van Peyster—“just the thing,
The wheel of fortune—and the loveliest saint;
That’s me exactly. What a perfect fit!”
And so ’twas painted, and the painted pair,
Saint Catherine and Miss Catherine, went across
Unto New York; and many people came
To call and worship—or to make believe.
And with the rest came Mr. Anthony,
A blooming broker, and a mighty man,
Who did not think small brewings of himself,
Albeit his studies had been very small,
And very few i’ the heap. His face and form
Were greasiness and grossness well combined,
With sneeriness and nearness in the eyes;
He seemed a kind of coarsest Capuchin.
And much he did admire the quaint conceit
Of being taken as a holy saint,
And said, “I’d like to try that thing myself.
How could a feller fix it——Catherine?”
“Easy enough,” replied the beautiful:
“You’ve only got to send your photograph
Out to my man in Florence, and to say,
‘Vous peignez moi comme le Saint Anthony.’
“I’ll write it for you if you have a card,
And he will fix it for you comme il faut.”
That very hour the heavy shaver wrote,
And sent the order for his portraiture.
And in due time ’twas done—and further on
’Twas in the Custom House—and thence ’twas sent
To the Spring Exhibition in New York,
There was no time to send it to “the House.”
And Anthony himself beheld it not
Till it had hung a week upon “the walls,”
And all the newspapers had served it up,
And all the world had merry made withal.
Yea, he was in it—clad in dirty rags,
A vile abomination. In his hand
A monstrous rosary. The Sunday Press
Said ’twas a rope of onions, meant to feed
The monstrous hog which filled the canvas up,
So vast in its proportions that it seemed
As Anthony were waiting on the hog,
And not the hog upon Saint Anthony.
In it and in for it. Just as the Saint
Of Padua is painted, with his pig,
Only a little more so. And thus ends
The tale of the great hog and Anthony.
“Saltokoff Skupchirofsky,” said the ruler
Of Russia to his captain of the guard,
“I will retire; the night is growing cooler
Have all the troops been posted in the yard?”
“They have, my liege, and in the tower o’er you
The watchman, with an opera-glass, afar
Looks out to see that no one comes to bore you:
Bogu Tsarachnie! God protect the Tsar!”
“What have you done with him who came this morning,
And wanted me to buy a lightning-rod?”
“He sleeps beneath the Neva, as a warning
To others like him, not as yet in quod.”
“The girl who bored us for a contribution
To send her blessed clergyman afar?”
“She’s strangled by the Seventh Resolution:
Bogu Tsarachnie! God protect the Tsar!”
“And where is he who gave us the conniptions,
That cheeky man from the United States,
Who came unto my bedside for subscriptions
To—what was it?—the ‘Life of Sergeant Bates’?”
“Upon a special train that man is flying
Unto Siberia in a third-class car;
Thou badest him ‘dry up!’ and he is drying:
Bogu Tsarachnie! God protect the Tsar!”
“And where is he who bored us for insurance
On life or fire, who down the chimney came?”
“My liege, beneath our feet in deepest durance
He pays with penance for his little game.”
“And, after him, the pedlar who came plungin’
Into the parlour, smoking a cigar?”
“Ask of the vipers in the palace dungeon:
Bogu Tsarachnie! God protect the Tsar!”
“And that young man who always kept a-saying,
‘That is the kind of hair-pin that I am’?”
“My liege, the strychnine in his vitals playing
May tell you how I stopped that kind of flam.
“And he who at this day is still repeating,
‘What, never, never?’ ” “In a butt of tar
We coopered him. His heart’s no longer beating:
Bogu Tsarachnie! God protect the Tsar!”
“And where is he who on the imperial fences
Inscribed Pop’s Bitters, and Take Fooler’s Pills?”
“My lord, his medicines were no defences,
In Hades he atones for earthly ills.”
“And that confounded nuisance of a Scotch Guard
Who played the bagpipes up and down the car?”
“My lord, the imperial headsman wears his watch-guard:
Bogu Tsarachnie! God protect the Tsar!”
“Captain, ’tis well. Now telegraph to London
That every Nihilist has had his dose,
And that a fresh conspiracy is undone,
And keep the gum-drop, corn-ball peddlers close
Who spread sedition in the trains to ’stress me;
And keep the gates of anarchy ajar;
So may Saint Feoderskidobry bless thee!
Bogu Tsarachnie! God protect the Tsar!”
“Now Mr. Gallagher is satisfied.”
So says the Boston Post. The facts are these:
He is the chief of a theatric club,
And as he deems that he can melodram,
He melodrammed for it a mighty piece
Of thundering incidents and awful scenes,
Which called for just nine actors. And they all
Declared that each had got the worst and curst
Of all the parts, and that ’twas written thus
To boom the fame of selfish Gallagher;
So the first night they came upon the boards,
With hearts like hornets and with souls like snakes
And feeling like old pizen, all agog
To be revenged upon the common foe,
Who was to act the hero. Act the first:
The hero and his mother meet to part,
And on her shoulders and o’er all her bust
The parent had put pins by papersful,
Till she was like a frightful porcupine;
And when she pressed her darling to her breast,
The pins en masse entered his very soul,
And pricked his nose, and ran into his cheeks,
So that he howled; but his mamma held on,
Easing her heart with rapturous revenge
While agonizing his. In the next act
He was on shipboard, and ’twas in the plot
That he should be knocked down and cuffed about
By a most cruel captain; and, God knows,
The captain played that part most perfectly,
Since in the start he went for Gallagher
With a belaying-pin, and laid him out
Secundum artem, and then let him up,
Only to let into him twice as hot,
’Mid rapturous hurrahs. In the next act
The hero led the crew to mutiny,
And Gallagher was glorious; but just then
Some one let down the trap on which he stood,
And there he was, up to his waist in stage,
Unable to get up or to go down,
And thus they kept him in captivity
While all the audience guyed him. When he strove
To climb they lowered him, and when he sought
To dodge beneath they highered him again;
So he went up and down like Erie stock
Until the scene was shifted. In the next
He fought the villain of the play, and this
Was Mr. Hencoop Smith, a stalwart rogue,
Extremely high on muscle, and the way
He lathered Gallagher about the stage
Was Awful Gardener. And when Smith should cry,
“Forgive me—I am crushed!” and Gallagher
Replied, “I’ll have your life!” the hero lay
Under the table, while his adversary
Bemauled him with a chair-leg. It was o’er,
And Gallagher, all black and blue, went home
To plotter out revenge. On the next night
The piece was adverred to be played again,
And Gallagher sent round a messenger,
Who said he was too ill to play his part,
But he would send a substitute. He did—
A giant-like ferocious prize-fighter,
Under another name. And how he played!
He squeezed the mother into raving fits,
And jerked her wig away by accident,
And threw the cruel captain down the trap,
And larruped all the actors; and when Smith
Came on to fight, he took him by the heels
And mopped the stage with him until ’twas clean,
Then hurled him through the flat. All was a wreck:
And in the front seat sat the Gallagher
And laughed until he cried. Revenge is sweet!
When they had finished the ethnology,
And polished up the climate and the crops,
And glorified the different kinds of bugs,
And told in turn their lies about the snakes,
And fish and deer and things, of Idaho,
A pensive cuss in spectacles inquired,
“All this is well enough; now how about
Your educational facilities?
And let me see in dots the time they go.”
“And that’s the only thing we really lack,”
Replied the Ancient, with a silvery sigh;
“We do defect in that ostensibly.
We have the schools, but then we cannot git
The folks to run ’em, or who will remain
Adjacent to ’em, for they will not keep.”
“How!—do they die?” “Wall, some on ’em expired,
Though Idaho ain’t an expirin’ State;
But I will tell you just the time they go.
“We had a fine young fellow from the East;
He licked the boys, and also kissed the gals,
And was all round uncommon popular,
Bein’ likewise an awful fightin’ man,
And there he did slop over. For one day
He met a grizzly bar upon the prowl,
And whistled to it, and the grizzly come;
But when he went he carried by express
All of that fine young man inside of him;
And that is just about the time they go.
“We had another from Connecticut:
A widder run him down, and married him
Inside the very school-house where he taught,
Just as an Injun cooks a terrapin
In its own shell, or as a lovely deer
Is sometimes aboriginally biled
Inside of its own skin, for that poor man
Has been in bilin’ water ever sense:
They say she makes it solemn hot for him.
And that is just about the time they go.
“The third was well enough, but he was lame;
I needn’t tell you how that one got spiled;
For sense he couldn’t run, one day, of course,
The Injuns overtook him, and the way
They treated him was pretty nigh as bad
As if they had been widders, and that man
Their lawful spouse. They also made it hot,
Because they took and briled him at the stake.
And that is just about the time they go.
“Then we tried women-folks to keep the school.
We writ for one. She came; and as she lit
Down from the stage, a man proposed to her
And was accepted, and she married him
That very night; in fact, within an hour
He gin a party, and we had a dance;
But Education suffered all the same,
As she declined to teach, bein’ inclined
To conjugate—excuse my little joke;
But that is just about the time they go.
“The second—wall, I took the second one
About the middle of the week she come;
But telegraphed unto the Institute,
‘Send on some more; keep sending of ’em on.’
And so they kept a-comin’, but they kep’
A-going speedier than they arrove,
For the third lady was abducted by
A highwayman before she got to us—
She took it awful kindly, I believe.
And that is just about the time they go.”
“But why,” exclaimed the wondering traveller,
“Don’t you obtain a scareful, ugly one—
Some hideous old faggot, just like that
Tremendous terror with the lantern-jaws
By yonder ticket-window? She would keep.”
“Alas! how strange,” replied the Ancient Man;
“How is it that you people from the East
Will never understand us pioneers?
That woman is my wife—the very one
I cut away from school; and she’s by far
The handsomest there was in all the drove.
For that is just about the time they go.”
Know’st thou the burning lay of Dante’s own,
“Nix mangiare é il diavolo!
Ma peggior la donna?” that’s to say,
“ ’Tis hard to be hard up, but harder still
To get ahead of women.” Never much,
While in Night’s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.
Oh, listen to me, for the tale I tell
Is of Chicago, and the latest out,
And by the noble Tribune novelist.
“Say, do you mean it, honest Injun, now?”
Said Vivian O’Riley to his sire.
“And faith I do,” the earnest sire replied:
“Marry this girl if so ye choose, me son,
But—if ye do—the divil a ha’penny
Of all me fortune will yees ever see,
While in Night’s cushion stars like pin-hids shine.”
Two hours have passed, and so have eight or ten
Slow-rolling tramway cars, until there comes
The one which Vivian wants, and soon it lands
The lover at the door of Pericles
O’Rourke, the father of bellissima,
The Lady Ethelberta. Lo, she sits
In her boudoir (the high-toned word for “room”),
Casting her soul in reverie o’er the trees,
While in Night’s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.
“I have bad news for you, my utmost own,”
Said Vivian in sad tones unto his love.
“Cusses and crocuses upon my luck!
And damns and daffodils on everything!”
And as he spoke there came into his face
A grey old scaly look which seemed to say,
Don’t bluff or you’ll be called. “My dad and I
Have had a round about, and he has dis—
Sis—sis—inherited me; and I have
Been given the g.-b. on your account,
My be—b—beau—tiful. And I am now
A beg—egg—eggar for you, Bertie dear!
While in Night’s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.
Her soft dusk eyes grew wide and serious.
“Yes,” he continued, “I am regular poor,
Poor as a busted Indian, and of course
It follows in the logic of our life
That I must give you up. I cannot ask
One in the golden glory of events
To come and share a fate which runs upon
A thousand annual dollars. Ne’er a case.
While in Night’s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.”
She looked at him with an incarnadine,
Rich, passionate, scarlet-sanguine crimson flush
Surging into her cheeks. If it had been
A full, ’tis probable that Vivian
Would have gone under; but a flush
Could never scare him or his similar,
While in Night’s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.
“Oh, Vivian!” she gurgled, like a dove,
“Oh, do you think I will let up on you?
And do you deem I would go back upon
The note I signed, and run to protest?—no—
Not while the snowy paper of my truth
Is quiréd by the young-eyed cherubim,
And in Night’s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.”
Three months or ninety days went by, and then
Upon a golden Californian
December afternoon, with azure skies
Like those of summer as they are produced
In less expensive countries, men beheld
A diamondaine wedding at the house
Of Ethelberta’s sire. As Vivian
And his fair bride sat in the car—ri—age
Which bore them to the station, ever on
She gazed upon him like a Lamia
With a strange look, which one might call, in fact,
A weirdly precious smile. He gazed at her.
“And so you would not leave me, love?” he cooed,
“Even when you thought me poor?” And she replied,
“Never, my precious one. I learned lang syne
That when a sucker once drops off the hook
It never bites again. And well you know
That you were on the point of dropping off,
And so your pa and I put up the job
So as to land you, dear—as faith we did—
A little quicker. Oh, men, men, men, men!
If ye thus round, girls will get square with you,
While in Night’s cushion stars like pin-heads shine.”
Yes, I’ll tell you how it happened—that, too, with all due respect
To the memory of Scroper, late departed architect—
How it came that he departed so abruptly in the train;
Why it was he’s been so late, too, in returnin’ back again.
Now some folks are born to greatness, some achieve it, as you’ve read;
And some justly stand and take it as it dollops on their head;
But in this sublime Republic, where it’s help and help again,
We all generally make it in cahoot with other men.
Scroper was a fine young fellow, of a monstrous enterprise;
Likewise really ambitious, for he was so bound to rise,
And he left no stone unturned—nor a log—he rolled ’em all,
Till at last he got the contract for our new great City Hall.
Now, of all our mortal actors here upon this earthly stage,
The contractors have the hardest parts to play, I will engage;
Specially in bran-new cities, just between the knead and bake,
And where all the population are severely on the make.
What between the Common Council, and the more uncommon sort,
Politicians, Press, and preachers, Scroper fell uncommon short.
All of such as come a-plummin’ when a puddin’s to be had;
All against his best contractin’ counteractin’ mighty bad.
Therefore when this edificial had got up his edifice,
All who’d not been edifishing with him soon got up a hiss;
Said the stuff upon the buildin’ was the worst that could be had,
Likewise called the architexture architechnically bad.
So it came one solemn evenin’ in a Presbyterian rain
Mr. Scroper all in silence gently took the Northern train;
All he left was one small message to a friend who shared his home,—
When the darned affair blows over, telegraph for me to come.
So he sat one summer mornin’, far away in Montreal,
Musin’ on his recent patrons, while at heart he darned ’em all,
When there came a little letter datin’ from his recent home,—
“All the thing is quite blown over, back again we bid you come.
“For last night we had a tempest,—while the mighty thunder rang,
Up there came a real guster, which blew down the whole shebang.
(Shebang’s a word from Hebrew, meanin’ Seven, sayeth Krupp,
And applied to any shanty where they play at seven-up.)
“Truly it was well blown over all to splinders in the night,
And the winds of heaven are blowing o’er the ruins as I write.”
Gentlemen, the story’s over. It would last for many a day
If it told of every buildin’ built upon the swindlin’ lay.
HE sat upon the window-sill and jingled ninety cents. There came
along another boy, who said, “How are you, Pence? You’re goin’ out
a-Christmassin’, I guess, among the Dutch, to buy some gifts.” The
other spoke: “No—not exactly much. I am in luck, this year, I am.
I haven’t any bills. My sister’s sick, and can’t expect no presents but
her pills. My brother Ben’s in Canada, away upon the wing. Of
course, you know he can’t suppose I’ll buy him anything. My mother
pulled my hair, last night, until she made me squall. Of course she
knows that she’s gone up for anything at all.” “But there’s your father,”
said his friend. “Well,—yes—I really thought that I was stuck on the
old man, and that he had me caught, and I was kinder looking round
to hunt him up a pipe; but then, this very mornin’ he hit me such a
wipe! That fixed his Christmas goose for him, and took away his joy.
Now all this money’s goin’ to a good and clever boy, to buy him lots of
pea-nuts and candy, I’ll engage—with caramels; and that good boy is
just my size and age.”
Thy heart is like some icy lake,
On whose cold brink I stand;
Oh, buckle on my spirit’s skate,
And take me by the hand!
And lead, thou living saint, the way
To where the ice is thin,
That it may break beneath my feet,
And let a lover in.
Spiritualistic Poetry.
Since Soul first basked in Passion’s sun,
I always ran to seed
In seeking One who’d gone and done
Some great heroic deed;
And deemed I’d find Life’s Earnest Truth
In Gloriana Clarke,
Whose eyes were like two carriage lamps
Advancing through the dark.
But as the rose of morning fades
Before the fire of noon,
Or sparrows yield in sylvan glades
To mocking-birds in June,
My Gloriana’s stock went down—
Its wheat all turned to chaff—
When I got in with Mary Miles,
Who ran the telegraph.
Her brow betokened serious life;
I knew my final queen;
A soul divine in gaiter-boots,
A Dream in crinoline.
Her parasol a glory seemed
Around a vivid saint,
The whole one spirit-photograph
Illumed with heavenly paint.
And thus she lifted up her voice,
That mission-mantled maid;
And thus she spoke with golden grace,
And sacredly she said—
A-pointing at me all the time
With that same parasol,
The light which gleams from silent lands
Around her seemed to fall—
“You’ve told of great and holy deeds—
I s’pose they all are true—
But in our telegraphic line
We’ve some adventures, too;
And though I do not like to boast
Of what I ever done,
One thing my Moral Consciousness
Declares was Number One.
“Last Fall I was in Tennessee
A-travelling might and main,
When all at once the engine broke—
They couldn’t run the train;
And if another train should come
’Twould rather make us scream.”
List to the glorious deed she did,
This angel of my dream.
“I saw a telegraphic line
Was running by our rout,
Though not a house or a machine
Was anywhere about.
And the conductor said, said he,
With his wild eyes of light:
‘Miss Miles, if we’d a battery,
I’d fix this scrape all right.
“ ‘I’d send ’em down a telegram
Some twenty miles below,
And ask for help.’ I looked at him—
‘I’ll fix the business, Joe.
Is there a pair of nippers here?
If so, those nippers bring;
And if you can’t, a sharp-edged file
Would be a heaven-sent thing.’ ”
“Unshadowed girl! I see the dodge,”
I cried in rapturous joy;
“And didst thou climb the post thyself?”
Said she, “I did, my boy.
A higher law of moral truth
Gave courage to my soul;
I did not show my garters once
In going up the pole.
“No poet ever felt such thrills
In touching of his lyre
As I did when I found there came
A message through the wire.
That wire I cut, and ’tween my teeth
I held it—ay, with pride—
And with my tongue the current clicked
To the wire on t’other side.
“On one side came the message in
From some man in New York:
‘Buy if you can, at ninety-five,
Five thousand sides of pork.’
And this same electricity
I changed as in a flash:
‘Send down an engine right away,
Or we shall go to smash.’
“The engine came, and all were saved—
Yet life is but a Dream.
I live—thou livest in a cloud:
We are not what we seem.
Still craving for the Infinite
In Time’s ideal lodge,
I grasped a truth—yet after all
’Twas but an earthly dodge.”
I gazed upon that spirit grand,
Upon my knees I sank,
And from mine eyes the burning sand
The scalding tear-drops drank.
Then soft she smiled: “If deeds like this
Can yield such victory,
And I am in your line, my love,
Then, love, I yield to thee.”
Ho, maidens of Vienna’s show!
Ho, matrons of Lucerne!
Look out for us next summer, when
We give your shop a turn.
I have won my soul’s ideal,
I have booked her for a wife;
And the Fancy and the Real
Are united in my life.