I, the Professor, am very much like other men.  I shall not find out when I have used up my affinities.  What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!  Painful as the task is, they never fail to warn the author, in the most impressive manner, of the probabilities of failure in what he has undertaken.  Sad as the necessity is to their delicate sensibilities, they never hesitate to advertise him of the decline of his powers, and to press upon him the propriety of retiring before he sinks into imbecility.  Trusting to their kind offices, I shall endeavor to fulfil——­

Bridget enters and begins clearing the table.

The following poem is my (the Professor’s) only contribution to the great department of Ocean-Cable literature.  As all the poets of this country will be engaged for the next six weeks in writing for the premium offered by the Crystal-Palace Company for the Barns Centenary, (so called, according to our Benjamin Franklin, because there will be nary a cent for any of us,) poetry will be very scarce and dear.  Consumers may, consequently, be glad to take the present article, which, by the aid of a Latin tutor and a Professor of Chemistry, will be found intelligible to the educated classes.

DE SAUTY.

AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE.

Professor.  Blue-Nose.

PROFESSOR.

  Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! 
  Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you
  Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder,
  Holding talk with nations?

  Is there a De Sauty ambulant on Tellus,
  Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap,
  Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature
  Three times daily patent?

  Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? 
  Or is he a mythus,—­ancient word for “humbug,”—­
  Such as Livy told about the wolf that wetnursed
  Romulus and Remus?

  Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? 
  Or a living product of galvanic action,
  Like the acarus bred in Crosse’s flint-solution? 
  Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

BLUE-NOSE.

  Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger,
  Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! 
  Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me,
  Thou shalt hear them answered.

  When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable,
  At the polar focus of the wire electric
  Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us. 
  Called himself “DE SAUTY.”

  As the small opossum held in pouch maternal
  Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia,
  So the unknown stranger held the wire electric,
  Sucking in the current.

  When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,—­
  Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,—­
  And from time to time, in sharp articulation,
  Said, “All right! DE SAUTY.”