Eliab this occasion seized,
(Distinctly here the spirit sneezed,)
To say that he should ne'er be eased
Till Jenny married whom she pleased,
Free from all checks and urgin's,
(This spirit dropt his final g's)
And that, unless Knott quickly sees
This done, the spirits to appease,
They would come back his life to tease,
As thick as mites in ancient cheese,
And let his house on an endless lease
To the ghosts (terrific rappers these
And veritable Eumenides)

Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins!

Knott was perplexed and shook his head, He did not wish his child to wed

With a suspected murderer, (For, true or false, the rumor spread,) But as for this roiled life he led, "It would not answer," so he said,

"To have it go no furderer."

At last, scarce knowing what it meant,
Reluctantly he gave consent
That Jenny, since 't was evident
That she would follow her own bent,
Should make her own election;
For that appeared the only way
These frightful noises to allay
Which had already turned him gray
And plunged him in dejection.

Accordingly, this artless maid
Her father's ordinance obeyed,
And, all in whitest crape arrayed,
(Miss Pulsifer the dresses made
And wishes here the fact displayed
That she still carries on the trade,

The third door south from Bagg's Arcade,)
A very faint "I do” essayed

And gave her hand to Hiram Slade,

From which time forth, the ghosts were laid,

And ne'er gave trouble after;
But the Selectmen, be it known,
Dug underneath the aforesaid stone,
Where the poor pedler's corpse
thrown,

And found thereunder a jaw-bone,
Though, when the crowner sat thereon,
He nothing hatched, except alone

Successive broods of laughter;
It was a frail and dingy thing,
In which a grinder or two did cling,

was

In color like molasses,

Which surgeons, called from far and wide, Upon the horror to decide,

Having put on their glasses,
Reported thus: "To judge by looks,
These bones, by some queer hooks or
crooks,

May have belonged to Mr. Snooks,
But, as men deepest-read in books
Are perfectly aware, bones,
If buried fifty years or so,
Lose their identity and grow

From human bones to bare bones."

Still, if to Jaalam you go down,
You'll find two parties in the town,
One headed by Benaiah Brown,

And one by Perez Tinkham;
The first believe the ghosts all through
And vow that they shall never rue
The happy chance by which they knew
That people in Jupiter are blue,
And very fond of Irish stew,

Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo Rapped clearly to a chosen few

Whereas the others think 'em A trick got up by Doctor Slade With Deborah the chambermaid And that sly cretur Jinny. That all the revelations wise,

At which the Brownites made big eyes,
Might have been given by Jared Keyes,
A natural fool and ninny,

And, last week, did n't Eliab Snooks
Come back with never better looks,
As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks,
And bright as a new pin, eh?
Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers
(Though to be mixed in parish stirs
Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs)
That no case to his mind occurs
Where spirits ever did converse,
Save in a kind of guttural Erse,

(So say the best authorities;)
And that a charge by raps conveyed
Should be most scrupulously weighed
And searched into, before it is
Made public, since it may give pain
That cannot soon be cured again,
And one word may infix a stain

Which ten cannot gloss over,
Though speaking for his private part,
He is rejoiced with all his heart

Miss Knott missed not her lover.

I AM a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam,

And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam;

But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel;

I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel,

And, as a natural consequence, presume I need n't say,

I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p

[I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount

Clump, Clump, the stairways of the brain with- 66 - Sir, my small account," And, after every good we gain

Love,

Fame, Wealth, Wisdom-still, As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill,

The garçons in our Café of Life, by dream

ing us forgot

Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,

Till they say, bowing, S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note!]

I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day,

The tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway,

Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop, if Cæsar could not pay;

Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now

Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow;

Nay, as long back as Bess's time, when Walsingham went over

Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover

He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land,

He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the

knaves in hand.

If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win,

Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in?

Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on,

And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison?

I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true;

"T is out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new:

The question boath for men and meates longe voyages ht beginne

Lhes in a notshell, rather saye lhes in a case of tinne.

But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages,

With self-sustaining retinues of little giltedged pages,

Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er

he likes to roam,

By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home;

And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then,

Our outlay is about as small- just paper, ink, and pen.

Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew; Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view, Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew;

Indeed, 't is wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past, Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last;

How it is sure its system would break up at once without

The bunion which it will believe hereditary gout;

How it takes all its swans for geese, nay,

stranger yet and sadder,

Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder,

Shouts, Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! One moment more aspire!

Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher,

And like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire.

There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere,

And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth

The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth:

"Well," thus it muses, "well, what odds? "T is not for us to warn;

'T will be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born;

Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn?

Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent. re

ceived from Treadmill shares,

We might... but these poor devils at last will get our easy-chairs. High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug, Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug;

From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum

Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come;

Young ears hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on, Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone;

Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an
egg was laid!
Cack-cack-cack-cackle! rang around, the
scratch for worms was stayed,
Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! from this egg the com-
ing cock shall stalk!

The great New Era dawns, the age of
Deeds and not of Talk!
And every stupid hen of us hugged close
his egg of chalk,

sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength, When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot,

But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!" So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful though it be,

I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me,

Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame

Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all coming till they came.

'T would seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak.)

Make but the public laugh, be sure 't will take you to be somebody;

"T will wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body; 'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why

Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie?

Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop,

And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop?

Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then

Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen? Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff; But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;

No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny,

And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey,

From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a clublick,

So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public.

Look how the dead leaves melt their way

down through deep-drifted snow; They take the sun-warmth down with them pearls could not conquer so; There is a moral here, you see; if you would preach, you must Steep all your truths in sunshine would you have them pierce the crust; Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign

And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine;

Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine!

I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold

There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel

A grandeur in the silent man forever at the wheel,

That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill,

Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain, and will,

And makes the ship, though skies are black

and headwinds whistle loud, Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud; And when by lusty western gales the full

sailed barque is hurled, Towards the great moon which, setting on the silent underworld, Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line,

Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine,

Then from the bows look back and feel a

thrill that never stales,

In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of

onward-yearning sails;

Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that
you can't make a poem,
Take him aboard a clipper - ship, young
Jonathan, and show him

A work of art that in its grace and grandeur

'T is not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that,

We think of Hyde Park Corner, and concede you beat us flat

With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked hat;

But 't is not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow,

Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now;

Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you,

You'd sell a bargain, if we 'd take the deans and chapters too;

No; mortal men build nowadays, as always heretofore,

Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore;

The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks,

Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks,

And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery,

If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary;

"T is well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe,

Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse,

If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger say, per

Contra to a loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper;

And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge,

Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge;

The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark,

Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark;

Religion, painting, sculpture, song for these they ran up jolly ticks With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics,

And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates

Are not entirely deaf to men who can build ships and states;

The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health

Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth,

Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen,

Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin:

And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid, nineteenth century; This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did

When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid,

Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wireleashed lightning now Replaces Delphos - men don't leave the steamer for the scow;

What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read

The Iliad, the Shanameh, or the Nibelungenlied?

Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph;

The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles; From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles,

As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars;

Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking,

The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking,

The newspapers take in the Age, and stocks do all the thinking.