The President rises; both old and young
  May hear his speech in a foreign tongue,
  The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear,
  Is this:  Can I keep this old arm-chair? 
  And then his Excellency bows,
  As much as to say that he allows. 
  The Vice-Gub. next is called by name;
  He bows like t’other, which means the same. 
  And all the officers round ’em bow,
  As much as to say that they allow. 
  And a lot of parchments about the chair
  Are handed to witnesses then and there,
  And then the lawyers hold it clear
  That the chair is safe for another year.

  God bless you, Gentlemen!  Learn to give
  Money to colleges while you live. 
  Don’t be silly and think you’ll try
  To bother the colleges, when you die,
  With codicil this, and codicil that,
  That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat;
  For there never was pitcher that wouldn’t spill,
  And there’s always a flaw in a donkey’s will!

* * * * *

——­Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, I suspect.  The shade of a palm-tree serves an African for a hut; his dwelling is all door and no walls; everybody can come in.  To make a morning call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep through a long tunnel; his house is all walls and no door, except such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has.  One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation between these two extremes.  In cities where the evenings are generally hot, the people have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, a provocative to the interchange of civilities.  A good deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to mean temperature.

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at noon, in a very hot summer’s day, one may realize, by a sudden extension in his sphere of consciousness, how closely he is shut up for the most part.—­Do you not remember something like this?  July, between 1 and 2, P.M.  Fahrenheit 96 deg., or thereabout.  Windows all gaping, like the mouths of panting dogs.  Long, stinging cry of a locust comes in from a tree, half a mile off; had forgotten there was such a tree.  Baby’s screams from a house several blocks distant;—­never knew of any babies in the neighborhood before.  Tinman pounding something that clatters dreadfully,—­very distinct, but don’t know of any tinman’s shop near by.  Horses stamping on pavement to get off flies.  When you hear these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day.  Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it:  stroll into the market in natural costume,—­buy a watermelon for a halfpenny,—­split it, and scoop out the middle,—­sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one’s head, and feast upon the pulp.