—­I have looked on the face of the Bore, of the Bore;
  The voice of the Simple I know;
  I have welcomed the Flat at my door, at my door;
  I have sat by the side of the Slow;

  I have walked like a lamb by the friend, by the friend,
  That stuck to my skirts like a burr;
  I have borne the stale talk without end, without end,
  Of the sitter whom nothing could stir: 

  But my hamstrings grow loose, and I shake and I shake,
    At the sight of the dreadful Old Man;
  Yea, I quiver and quake, and I take, and I take,
    To my legs with what vigor I can!

  Oh, the dreadful Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea! 
    He’s come back like the Wandering Jew! 
  He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,—­
    And be sure that he’ll have it on you!

* * * * *

THE GREAT EVENT OF THE CENTURY.

A LETTER FROM PAUL TOTTER, OF NEW YORK, TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO, COMMORANT OF WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

22,728 Five Hundred and Fifty-First St., New York, May 1, 1858.

Dear Don Bobus,—­Pardon my abruptness. In medias res is the rule, you know, formose puer, my excellent old boy!  Bring out the Saint Peray, if there be a bottle of that flavorous and flavous tipple in your extensive cellars,—­which I doubt, since you never had more than a single flask thereof, presented to you by a returned traveller, who bought it, to my certain knowledge, of a mixer in Congress Street, in Boston.  We drank it, O ale-knight, sub teg. pat. fag. more than five years ago, of a summer evening, in dear old Cambridge, then undisfigured by the New Chapel.  That it did not kill us as dead as Stilpo of Megara (vide Seneca de Const. for a notice of that foolish old Stoic) was entirely owing to my abstinence and your naturally strong constitution; for I remember that you bolted nearly the whole of it.  You proved yourself to be a Mithridates of white lead; while I—­but I say no more.  I could quote you an appropriate passage from the tippler of Teos, and in the original Greek, if I had not long ago pawned my copy of Anacreon (Barnes, 12 mo.  Cantab. 1721) to a fellow in Cornhill, who sold it on the very next day to a total-abstinence tutor.  Episodically I may say, that the purchaser read it to such purpose, that within a week he rose to the honor of sleeping in the station-house, from which keep he was rescued by a tearful friend, who sent him to the country, solitude, and spruce-beer.

“It is useless,” says the Staggerite, “for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses.”  It may also be useless for a sober man to try to write letters to “The New York Scorpion.”  In your perilous and unhappy situation you must be a rule unto yourself.  But remember, O Bobus, the saying of Montaigne, that “apoplexy will knock down Socrates as well as a porter.”  You are not exactly Socrates; but your best friends have remarked that you are getting to be exceedingly stout.  Stick to your cups, but forbear, as Milton says, “to interpose them oft.” In medio tutissimus,—­Half a noggin is better than no wine.  For the sake of the dear old times, spare me the pain of seeing you a reformed inebriate or a Martha Washington!