A BUBBLE.
Mrs. Mehitable Marcia Moore
Was a dame of superior mind,
With a gown which, modestly fitting before,
Was greatly puffed up behind.
The bustle she wore was ingeniously planned
With an inspiration bright:
It magnified seven diameters and
Was remarkably nice and light.
It was made of rubber and edged with lace
And riveted all with brass,
And the whole immense interior space
Inflated with hydrogen gas.
The ladies all said when she hove in view
Like the round and rising
moon:
“She’s a stuck up thing!”
which was partly true,
And men called her the Captive
Balloon.
To Manhattan Beach for a bath one day
She went and she said:
“O dear!
If I leave off this what will people
say?
I shall look so uncommonly
queer!”
So a costume she had accordingly made
To take it all nicely in,
And when she appeared in that suit arrayed,
She was greeted with many
a grin.
Proudly and happily looking around,
She waded out into the wet,
But the water was very, very profound,
And her feet and her forehead
met!
As her bubble drifted away from the shore,
On the glassy billows borne,
All cried: “Why, where is Mehitable
Moore?
I saw her go in, I’ll be sworn!”
Then the bulb it swelled as the sun grew
hot,
Till it burst with a sullen
roar,
And the sea like oil closed over the spot—
Farewell, O Mehitable Moore!
A RENDEZVOUS.
Nightly I put up this humble petition:
“Forgive me, O Father
of Glories,
My sins of commission, my sins of omission,
My sins of the Mission Dolores.”
FRANCINE.
Did I believe the angels soon would call
You, my beloved, to the other
shore,
And I should never see you
any more,
I love you so I know that I should fall
Into dejection utterly, and all
Love’s pretty pageantry,
wherein we bore
Twin banners bravely in the
tumult’s fore,
Would seem as shadows idling on a wall.
So daintily I love you that my love
Endures no rumor of the winter’s
breath,
And only blossoms
for it thinks the sky
Forever gracious, and the stars above
Forever friendly. Even
the fear of death
Were frost wherein
its roses all would die.
AN EXAMPLE.
They were two deaf mutes, and they loved
and they
Resolved to be groom and bride;
And they listened to nothing that any
could say,
Nor ever a word replied.
From wedlock when warned by the married
men,
Maintain an invincible mind:
Be deaf and dumb until wedded—and
then
Be deaf and dumb and blind.