Piece of intelligence inspired,
The truth whereof had been inquired
By some one of the company;
For instance, Fielding, Mirabeau,
Orator Henley, Cicero,
Paley, John Zisca, Marivaux,
Melancthon, Robertson, Junot,
Scaliger, Chesterfield, Rousseau,
Hakluyt, Boccaccio, South, De Foe,
Diaz, Josephus, Richard Roe,
Odin, Arminius, Charles le gros,
Tiresias, the late James Crow,
Casabianca, Grose, Prideaux,

With this response the chamber rang,

"I guess it was Old Hundred." And Franklin, being asked to name The reason why the lightning came,

Replied, "Because it thundered."

sot,

Maimonides, the Chevalier D'O,

Socrates, Fenelon, Job, Stow,
The inventor of Elixir pro,
Euripides, Spinoza, Poe,

Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo,
Came (as it seemed, somewhat de trop)
With a disembodied Esquimaux,
To say that it was so and so,

With Franklin's expedition;
One testified to ice and snow,
One that the mercury was low,
One that his progress was quite slow,
One that he much desired to go,
One that the cook had frozen his toe,
(Dissented from by Dandolo,
Wordsworth, Cynaegirus, Boileau,
La Hontan, and Sir Thomas Roe,)
One saw twelve white bears in a row,
One saw eleven and a crow,
With other things we could not know
(Of great statistic value, though,)

By our mere mortal vision.

Sometimes the spirits made mistakes, And seemed to play at ducks and drakes With bold inquiry's heaviest stakes

In science or in mystery; They knew so little (and that wrong) Yet rapped it out so bold and strong, One would have said the unnumbered throng

Had been Professors of History;
What made it odder was, that those
Who, you would naturally suppose,
Could solve a question, if they chose,
As easily as count their toes,

Were just the ones that blundered;
One day, Ulysses happening down,
A reader of Sir Thomas Browne

And who (with him) had wondered

What song it was the Sirens sang,

A bloody fact, which he alone
Was privy to, (such ghosts more prone

In Earth's affairs to meddle are ;) Who are you? with awe-stricken looks, All ask his airy knuckles he crooks, And raps, "I was Eliab Snooks,

That used to be a pedler;

Some on ye still are on my books!"
Whereat, to inconspicuous nooks,
(More fearing this than common spooks,)
Shrank each indebted meddler;
Further the vengeful ghost declared
That while his earthly life was spared,
About the country he had fared,

A duly licensed follower

Of that much-wandering trade that wins
Slow profit from the sale of tins

And various kinds of hollow-ware;
That Colonel Jones enticed him in,
Pretending that he wanted tin,
There slew him with a rolling-pin,
Hid him in a potato-bin,

And (the same night) him ferried Across Great Pond to t' other shore, And there, on land of Widow Moore, Just where you turn to Larkin's store,

Under a rock him buried; Some friends (who happened to be by) He called upon to testify

That what he said was not a lie,

And that he did not stir this Foul matter, out of any spite But from a simple love of right;

Which statements the Nine Worthies, Rabbi Akiba, Charlemagne, Seth, Colley Cibber, General Wayne, Cambyses, Tasso, Tubal-Cain, The owner of a castle in Spain, Jehanghire, and the Widow of Nain, (The friends aforesaid,) made more plain And by loud raps attested;

To the same purport testified

Who knew said Snooks before he died,
Had in his wares invested,
Thought him entitled to belief
And freely could concur, in brief,
In everything the rest did.

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 was thrown,

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

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 chamber-maid
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-burs)
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.

Have trod far planets where the atmosphere

(Of nobler temper) steeps the face with light,

Just as our skins are tanned and freckled here;

His air was that of a cosmopolite In the wide universe from sphere to sphere;

Perhaps he was (his face had such grave beauty)

An officer of Saturn's guards off duty.

XIV.

mere

All day and night, in sunshine and in shower,

From their vast heads of milk-andwater-power.