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Were silver-fringed; the driver's own was blue

As the coarse frock that swung below

his knee.

Behind his load for shelter waded he; His mittened hands now on his chest he beat,

Now stamped the stiffened cowhides of his feet,

Hushed as a ghost's; his armpit scarce could hold

The walnut whipstock slippery-bright with cold.

What wonder if, the tavern as he past, He looked and longed, and stayed his beasts at last,

Who patient stood and veiled themselves in steam

While he explored the bar-room's ruddy gleam?

"Before the fire, in want of thought profound,

There sat a brother-townsman weatherbound.

A sturdy churl, crisp-headed, bristlyeared,

Red as a pepper; 'twixt coarse brows and beard

His eyes lay ambushed, on the watch for fools,

Clear, gray, and glittering like two bayedged pools;

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swear at.'

"By this time Obed had his wits thawed out,

And, looking at the other half in doubt, Took off his fox-skin cap to scratch his head,

Donned it again, and drawled forth, 'Mean he's dead?'

Jesso; he 's dead and t' other d that follers

With folks that never love a thing but dollars.

He pulled up stakes last evening, fair and square,

And ever since there's been a row Down There.

The minute the old chap arrived, you see, Comes the Boss-devil to him, and says he, "What are you good at? Little enough,

I fear;

We callilate to make folks useful here." Well," says old Bitters, "I expect I

A shifty creature, with a turn for fun, Could swap a poor horse for a better"

one,

He'd a high-stepper always in his stall; Liked far and near, and dreaded therewithal.

To him the in-comer, 'Perez, how d'ye do?'

'Jest as I'm mind to, Obed; how do you?'

Then, his eyes twinkling such swift gleams as run

Along the levelled barrel of a gun Brought to his shoulder by a man you know

Will bring his game down, he continued, So,

I s'pose you're haulin' wood? But you're too late ;

The Deacon's off; Old Splitfoot could n't

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"Bitters he took the rod, and pretty | That in five minutes they had drawed

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crowd,

And afore long the Boss, who heard the

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where you be;

You can't go in athout a pass from me." "All right," says t' other, "only step round smart;

I must be home by noon-time with the cart."

Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat, Then with a scrap of paper on his hat Pretends to cipher. "By the public staff, That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half."

"There's fourteen foot and over," says the driver,

"Worth twenty dollars, ef it's worth a stiver;

Good fourth-proof brimstone, that'll make 'em squirm, —

I leave it to the Headman of the Firm;
After we masure it, we always lay
Some on to allow for settlin' by the way.
Imp and full-grown, I've carted sulphur
here,

And gi'n fair satisfaction, thirty year."

says he,

fairer load was ever seen by me." Then, turnin' to the Deacon, “ You mean cus,

None of your old Quompegan tricks with

us!

They won't do here: we're plain oldfashioned folks,

And don't quite understand that kind o' jokes.

I know this teamster, and his pa afore him,

And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore him;

He would n't soil his conscience with a lie,

Though he might get the custom-house thereby.

Here, constable, take Bitters by the

queue,

And clap him into furnace ninety-two, And try this brimstone on him; if he's bright,

He'll find the masure honest afore night.
He is n't worth his fuel, and I'll bet
The parish oven has to take him yet!"'

"This is my tale, heard twenty years

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With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as beats

Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind, The landlords of the hospitable mind; Good Warriner of Springfield was the last;

An inn is now a vision of the past; One yet-surviving host my mind recalls,

You'll find him if you go to Trenton Falls."

THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY.

WHEN wise Minerva still was young
And just the least romantic,
Soon after from Jove's head she flung
That preternatural antic,
'Tis said, to keep from idleness

Or flirting, those twin curses,
She spent her leisure, more or less,
In writing po, no, verses.

How nice they were! to rhyme with far
A kind star did not tarry;
The metre, too, was regular

As schoolboy's dot and carry ;
And full they were of pious plums,
So extra-super-moral,
For sucking Virtue's tender gums
Most tooth enticing coral.

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The many-volumed thunder. Some augurs counted nine, some, ten; Some said 't was war, some, famine, And all. that other-minded men Would get a precious

"

Proud Pallas sighed, "It will not do; Against the Muse I've sinned, oh! And her torn rhymes sent flying through Olympus's back window.

Then, packing up a peplus clean,

She took the shortest path thence,
And opened, with a mind serene,
A Sunday-school in Athens.

The verses? Some in ocean swilled,
Killed every fish that bit to 'em ;
Some Galen caught, and, when distilled,
Found morphine the residuum;
But some that rotted on the earth
Sprang up again in copies,

And gave two strong narcotics birth,
Didactic verse and poppies.

Years after, when a poet asked
The Goddess's opinion,

As one whose soul its wings had tasked
In Art's clear-aired dominion,

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'Discriminate," she said, "betimes;
The Muse is unforgiving;
Put all your beauty in your rhymes,
Your morals in your living."

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You scan the addresses with dread, While he mutters his donners and wet

ters,

They're all from the dead to the dead!

You seem taking time for reflection,

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CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE.
O DAYS endeared to every Muse,
When nobody had any Views,
Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind
By every breeze was new designed,

But the heart fills your throat with a Insisted all the world should see

jam,

As you spell in each faded direction
An ominous ending in dam.

Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend?
That were changing green turtle to
mock:

No, thank you! I've found out which wedge-end

Is meant for the head of a block.

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Camels or whales where none there be !
O happy days, when men received
From sire to son what all believed,
And left the other world in bliss,
Too busy with bedevilling this!

Beset by doubts of every breed
In the last bastion of my creed,
With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime,
I watch the storming-party climb,
Panting (their prey in easy reach),
To pour triumphant through the breach
In walls that shed like snowflakes tons
Of missiles from old-fashioned guns,
But crumble 'neath the storm that pour
All day and night from bigger bores.
There, as I hopeless watch and wait
The last life-crushing coil of Fate,
Despair finds solace in the praise
Of those serene dawn-rosy days
Ere microscopes had made us heirs
To large estates of doubts and snares,
By proving that the title-deeds,

Once all-sufficient for men's needs, Are palimpsests that scarce disguise The tracings of still earlier lies, Themselves as surely written o'er An older fib erased before.

So from these days I fly to those
That in the landlocked Past repose,
Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes
From bloom-flushed boughs untimely
flakes;

Where morning's eyes see
strange,

nothing

No crude perplexity of change,
And morrows trip along their ways
Secure as happy yesterdays.
Then there were rulers who could trace
Through heroes up to gods their race,
Pledged to fair fame and noble use
By veins from Odin filled or Zeus,
And under bonds to keep divine
The praise of a celestial line.

Then priests could pile the altar's sods, With whom gods spake as they with gods,

And everywhere from haunted earth
Broke springs of wonder, that had birth
In depths divine beyond the ken
And fatal scrutiny of men;

Then hills and groves and streams and

seas

Thrilled with immortal presences,
Not too ethereal for the scope
Of human passion's dream or hope.

Now Pan at last is surely dead,
And King No-Credit reigns instead,
Whose officers, morosely strict,
Poor Fancy's tenantry evict,
Chase the last Genius from the door,
And nothing dances any more.
Nothing? Ah, yes, our tables do,
Drumming the Old One's own tattoo,
And, if the oracles are dumb,
Have we not mediums? Why be glum?

Fly thither? Why, the very air
Is full of hindrance and despair!
Fly thither? But I cannot fly;
My doubts enmesh me if I try,
Each lilliputian, but, combined,
Potent a giant's limbs to bind.

This world and that are growing dark;
A huge interrogation mark,
The Devil's crook episcopal,

Still borne before him since the Fall,
Blackens with its ill-omened sign

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Try it with Zeus, 't is just the same;
The thing evades, we hug a name;
Nay, scarcely that, perhaps a vapor
Born of some atmospheric caper.
All Lempriere's fables blur together
In cloudy symbols of the weather,
And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas
But to illustrate such hypotheses.
With years enough behind his back,
Lincoln will take the selfsame track,
And prove, hulled fairly to the cob,
A mere vagary of Old Prob.

Give the right man a solar myth,
And he 'll confute the sun therewith.

They make things admirably plain, But one hard question will remain

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