A POETICAL QUANDARY.

299

you to put in some verses, to wind up the yarn.' 'Such as what?' said I. This:

'MY pen is poor, my ink is pale,

My love for you shall never fail.'

'I wrote at his dictation until I came to the word 'pale.' 'That will never do,' said I, 'for this ink is most particularly black'— and it was ‘black as Erebus,' or 'the ace of spades.' This was a poser. He scratched his head in most amusing perplexity. 'I must have the poetry,' said he, at any rate; and what if it aint exactly true? Will that hurt it?' 'Not as poetry,' said I, refining, 'but as fact. It will be a false statement of a matter of fact, and the falsehood will be apparent on the face of the record, and falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, you know JACK! How can BETSEY believe a word you say, with such a black falsehood staring her in the face?' (I was young, and fresh from BLACKSTONE, and talked learnedly.) 'What shall we do?' cried JACK; 'you must fix it somehow.' 'How will this answer, JACK?' I asked:

'First-rate!' exclaimed JACK; and so it went, and so ended my first and last attempt at poetry. I wish I had kept a copy of that letter!'

300

AN IMPROMPTU 'CROW-BAR.'

THE BACHELOR' was in a 'reverie:' 'RALPH SEAWULF' was silent: RICHARD HAYWARDE' was musing, and Old KNICK.' was drinking in the exhilarating air of the sweet Spring morning —(we four, and no more,' were being wheeled to Huntington, Long Island, over a beautiful road, through pleasant villages, in a fine vehicle, drawn by a pair of fast bays') - when HAYWARDE, noting a long neck of land pushing out into the Sound, bare at low tide, and thickly besprinkled with crows, inquired, 'What is that? Long-Neck,' Horse-neck,' 'Cow-Neck,' 'LittleNeck, Rye-Neck,' or which of the Long-Island Necks' is it?' 'Neither, I fancy,' answered one of us;' 'it is

6

เ

only a nameless bar putting out into the Sound: but I should think Crow-bar' would be a good designation for it.'

NUMBER FOURTEEN.

A REVERSED WASH-TUB: A RAIL-ROAD LYRIC: A PERSONAL FUNERAL: THE TOPER'S SPECTACLES: REV. JOHN MASON-QUAINT TABLE GRACES': A MILITARY DILEMMA: MATRIMONIAL INDIFFERENCE: STANZAS'SNOW': 'FUNNY MEN': A HOPEFUL SON: ANECDOTE OF WHITFIELD: THE-GALLOWS: THE VORK-'OUSE BOY-A PARODY: OLLAPOD'S EPISTOLARY POETRY: ANECDOTE OF ALVAN STEWART: A 'BORE' IN THE PILLORY.

6

HE horrors of Washing Day' have composed a time

THE

6

hallowed theme for grumblers, and have elicited the soft numbers of the poets. But according to an amusing traveller, whose Letters' we have recently read, they remove far off the annoyance in some parts of the old world. At Ouchy, near Lausanne, he writes: 'I saw to-day for the first time in my life a converse of the washing-tub theorem. In the common case, the washing-tub contains water and the linen, but not the washer-woman, who is at some point without the tub: in this case the tub contained the washer-woman, but neither water nor linen. The women were standing in tubs in the lake, and were washing clothes which were on the outside of the tub in the water. The mode they have of subsequently smacking the linen on the stones is a most uncharitable and un

302

A RAIL-ROAD LYRIC.

christian proceeding. Far from hiding the defects of an old shirt, it puts them immediately in a very striking light, and makes the most of all its little weaknesses.'

THE ensuing lines are quite in the style of THACKERAY'S 'PEG of Limavady;' yet they are perfectly origi nal, and do not even verge upon parody. The reader will observe how completely the measure chimes with rail-road motion:

THE well-known anecdote of 'JARVIS and the melancholy Frenchman' with the segar-box had its parallel here a short time since. A gentleman of bituminous complexion, dressed all in sables, with black coat, black vest, black gloves, black pantaloons, and black hat, with a very long black streamer depending therefrom, was walking alone through Broadway 'with solemn step and slow,' bearing a very small baby's coffin under his right arm. A brother 'darky' coming from the opposite direction, with a recognitive grin, exposing a row of teeth like the keys of a piano, hailed him: 'Well, JOE! where is you bound dis mornin' wid yu box?' 'SAAM!' said the mourner, with a look of offended dignity, and a 'stand-aside' wave