the “VIDUATE dame”
  Four of A kind
  reconciliation
  A vision of climate
  A “Mass” Meeting
  for President, Leland Stanford
  for Mayor
  A cheating preacher
  A crocodile
  the American party
  UNCOLONELED
  the gates ajar
  tidings of good
  arboriculture
  A Silurian holiday
  rejected
  JUDEX JUDICATUS
  on the Wedding of an aeronaut
  A Hasty inference
  A voluptuary
  ad CATTONUM
  the National guardsman
  the barking Weasel
  A rear Elevation
  in upper San Francisco
  Nimrod
  censor LITERARUM
  borrowed brains
  the FYGHTYNGE seventh
  indicted
  over the border
  one judge
  to an insolent attorney
  accepted
  A promised fast train
  one off the saints
  A military incident
  substance versus shadow
  the committee on public morals
  California
  de young—­A prophecy
  to either
  Disappointment
  the valley of the shadow of theft
  down among the dead men
  the last man
  Arbor day
  the Piute
  fame
  one of the redeemed
  A critic
  A question of eligibility
  fleet Strother
  Californian summer pictures
  slander
  James L. Flood
  four candidates for senator
  A Growler
  ad MOODIUM
  an epitaph
  A spade
  the Van NESSIAD
  A fish commissioner
  to A stray dog
  in his hand
  A demagogue
  ignis FATUUS
  from Top to bottom
  an Idler
  the dead king
  A Patter song
  A Caller
  the Shafter shafted

  The mummery

  The two CAVEES
  metempsychosis
  slickens
  “Peaceable expulsion”
  Aspirants three
  the birth of the rail
  A bad night

  On stone

  A Wreath of IMMORTELLES

IN EXPLANATION

Many of the verses in this book are republished, with considerable alterations, from various newspapers.  The collection includes few not relating to persons and events more or less familiar to the people of the Pacific Coast—­to whom the volume may be considered as especially addressed, though, not without a hope that some part of the contents may be found to have sufficient intrinsic interest to commend it to others.  In that case, doubtless, commentators will be “raised up” to make exposition of its full meaning, with possibly an added meaning read into it by themselves.

Of my motives in writing, and in now republishing, I do not care to make either defense or explanation, except with reference to those persons who since my first censure of them have passed away.  To one having only a reader’s interest in the matter it may easily seem that the verses relating to those might more properly have been omitted from this collection.  But if these pieces, or, indeed, if any considerable part of my work in literature, have the intrinsic worth which by this attempt to preserve some of it I have assumed, their permanent suppression is impossible, and it is only a question of when and by whom they shall be republished.  Some one will surely search them out and put them in circulation.