There’s a boy,—­we pretend,—­with a three-decker-brain,
  That could harness a team with a logical chain;
  When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
  We called him “The Justice,” but now he’s “The Squire.”

  And there’s a nice youngster of excellent pith,—­
  Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith,—­
  But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,—­
  —­Just read on his medal,—­“My country,”—­“of thee!”

  You hear that boy laughing?—­You think he’s all fun,—­
  But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done. 
  The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
  And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!

  Yes, we’re boys,—­always playing with tongue or with pen,—­
  And I sometimes have asked,—­Shall we ever be men? 
  Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay,
  Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

  Then here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! 
  The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May! 
  And when we have done with our life-lasting toys
  Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!

* * * * *

WHITE’S SHAKSPEARE.[A]

[Footnote A:  The Works of William Shakespeare.  Edited, etc., by RICHARD GRANT WHITE.  Vols.  II., III., IV., and V. Boston:  Little, Brown, & Co. 1858]

(SECOND NOTICE.)

We doubt if posterity owe a greater debt to any two men living in 1623 than to the two obscure actors who in that year published the first folio edition of Shakspeare’s plays.  But for them, it is more than likely that such of his works as had remained to that time imprinted would have been irrecoverably lost, and among them were “Julius Caesar,” “The Tempest,” and “Macbeth.”  But are we to believe them when they assert that they present to us the plays which they reprinted from stolen and surreptitious copies “cured and perfect of their limbs,” and those which are original in their edition “absolute in their numbers as he [Shakspeare] conceived them”?  Alas, we have read too many theatrical announcements, have been taught too often that the value of the promise was in an inverse ratio to the generosity of the exclamation-marks, too easily to believe that!  Nay, we have seen numberless processions of healthy kine enter our native village unheralded save by the lusty shouts of drovers, while a wretched calf, cursed by stepdame Nature with two heads, was brought to us in a triumphal car, avant-couriered by a band of music as abnormal as itself, and announced as the greatest wonder of the age.  If a double allowance of vituline brains deserve such honor, there are few commentators on Shakspeare that would have gone afoot, and the trumpets of Messieurs Heminge and Condell call up in our minds too many monstrous and deformed associations.