Even there I heard a strange wild strain
Sound high above the modern clamour,
Above the cries of greed and gain,

The kerbstone war, the auction's hammer, -And swift, on Music's misty ways,

It led, from all this strife for millions, To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it stilled the multitude,

And yet more joyous rose and shriller,
I saw the minstrel, where he stood
At ease against a Doric pillar:
One hand a droning organ played;
The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned
Like those of old) to lips that made

The reeds give out that strain impassioned.
'Twas Pan himself had wandered here
A-strolling through this sordid city,
And piping to the civic ear

The prelude of some pastoral ditty!

The demigod had crossed the seas,-

From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,

And Syracusan times, -to these

Far shores and twenty centuries later.

A ragged cap was on his head :

But-hidden thus-there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread,

His gnarlèd horns were somewhere sprouting;

His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes,

Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them,

And trousers, patched of divers hues,

Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.

He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
And o'er his mouth their changes shifted,
And with his goat's-eyes looked around
Where'er the passing current drifted;
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills

The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him, Even now the tradesmen from their tills,

With clerks and porters, crowded near him.

The bulls and bears together drew

From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, As erst, if pastorals be true,

Came beasts from every wooded valley;
The random passers stayed to list,—
A boxer Egon, rough and merry,-
A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst
With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.

A one-eyed Cyclops halted long
In tattered cloak of army pattern,
And Galatea joined the throng,-

A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;
While old Silenus staggered out

From some new-fangled lunch-house handy,
And bade the piper, with a shout,

To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy!

A newsboy and a peanut-girl

Like little Fauns began to caper:
His hair was all in tangled curl,

Her tawny legs were bare and taper;
And still the gathering larger grew,
And gave its pence and crowded nigher,
While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew

His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.

O heart of Nature, beating still

With throbs her vernal passion taught her
Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,

Or by the Arethusan water!

New forms may fold the speech, new lands
Arise within these ocean-portals,
But Music waves eternal wands,-
Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

So thought I,-but among us trod
A man in blue, with legal baton,
And scoffed the vagrant demigod,
And pushed him from the step I sat on.
Doubting I mused upon the cry

"Great Pan is dead!"-and all the people
Went on their ways—and clear and high
The quarter sounded from the steeple.

F. BRET HARTE.

[Born about 1835. A name now universally known, by the authorship of The Luck of Roaring Camp, and especially of the verses on That Heathen Chinee].

THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS.

I RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games;

And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.

But first I would remark that it is not a proper plan

For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,

To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him.

Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months' proceedings of that same society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.

Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare ;
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost
mules.

Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault:
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault.
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.

Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass,—at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him to any great extent.

Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order-when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,

And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of a paleozoic age;

And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.

And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James ;
And I've told in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.

PENELOPE.

SIMPSON'S BAR, 1858.

So you've kem 'yer agen,
And one answer won't do?
Well, of all the derned men

That I've struck, it is you.

O Sal! 'yer's that derned fool from Simpson's,

cavortin' round 'yer in the dew.

Kem in, ef you will.

Thar,-quit! Take a cheer.

Not that; you can't fill

Them theer cushings this year,

For that cheer was my old man's, Joe Simpson, and

they don't make such men about 'yer.

He was tall, was my Jack,
And as strong as a tree.
Thar's his gun on the rack,-
Jest you heft it, and see.

And you come a courtin' his widder. Lord! where
can that critter, Sal, be?

You'd fill my Jack's place?

And a man of your size,-
With no baird to his face,
Nor a snap to his eyes,

And nary-Sho! thar! I was foolin',--I was,

Joe, for sartain,—don't rise.

Sit down.

Law! why, sho!

I'm as weak as a gal.

Sal! Don't you go, Joe,

Or I'll faint,-sure I shall.

Sit down, -anywheer where you like, Joe,-in that cheer, if you choose,-Lord, where's Sal?

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL.

A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS.

"SPEAK, O man less recent! Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,

Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
Of volcanic tufa!

"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium;
Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami;
Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions
Of earth's epidermis !

"Eo-Mio-Plio-whatsoe'er the '-cene' was
That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,—
Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,—

Tell us thy strange story!

"Or has the professor slightly antedated

By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,
Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted
For cold-blooded creatures?

"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest
When above thy head the stately Sigillaria

Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant
Carboniferous epoch?

"Tell us of that scene,-the dim and watery woodland Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect

Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club-mosses,
Lycopodiacea,-

"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus,
And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus,
While from time to time above thee flew and circled
Cheerful Pterodactyls.

"Tell us of thy food,-those half-marine refections,
Crinoids on the shell and Brachipods au naturel,—
Cuttle-fish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo
Seems a periwinkle.

"Speak, thou awful vestige of the Earth's creation,-
Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,-
Speak! thou oldest Primate !"

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla,

And a lateral movement of the condyloid process,
With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication,
Ground the teeth together.

And, from that imperfect dental exhibition,
Stained with expressed juices of the weed Nicotian,
Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs
Of expectoration;

"Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted
Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County;

But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces

Home to old Missouri !”

ROBERT H. NEWELL.

[This popular writer is author of the Orpheus C. Kerr (i.e. Office-seeker) Papers; from which book the following piece is taken).

THE AMERICAN TRAVELLER.

To Lake Aghmoogenegamook,
All in the State of Maine,

A man from Wittequergaugaum came
One evening in the rain.

"I am a traveller," said he,
"Just started on a tour,
And go to Nomjamskillicook
To-morrow morn at four."