ANOTHER PLAN

Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as “our friend J.J.” 
Weary of scribbling for daily bread,
Weary of writing what nobody read,
Slept one day at his desk and dreamed
That an angel before him stood and beamed
With compassionate eyes upon him there.

Editor Owen is not so fair
In feature, expression, form or limb
But glances like that are familiar to him;
And so, to arrive by the shortest route
At his visitor’s will he said, simply:  “Toot.” 
“Editor Owen,” the angel said,
“Scribble no more for your daily bread. 
Your intellect staggers and falls and bleeds,
Weary of writing what nobody reads. 
Eschew now the quill—­in the coming years
Homilize man through his idle ears. 
Go lecture!” “Just what I intended to do,”
Said Owen.  The angel looked pained and flew.

Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as “our friend J.J.” 
Scribbling no more to supply his needs,
Weary of writing what nobody reads,
Passes of life each golden year
Speaking what nobody comes to hear.

A POLITICAL APOSTATE

Good friend, it is with deep regret I note
The latest, strangest turning of your coat;
Though any way you wear that mental clout
The seamy side seems always to be out. 
Who could have thought that you would e’er sustain
The Southern shotgun’s arbitrary reign!—­
Your sturdy hand assisting to replace
The broken yoke on a delivered race;
The ballot’s purity no more your care,
With equal privilege to dark and fair. 
To Yesterday a traitor, to To-day
You’re constant but the better to betray
To-morrow.  Your convictions all are naught
But the wild asses of the world of thought,
Which, flying mindless o’er the barren plain,
Perceive at last they’ve nothing so to gain,
And, turning penitent upon their track,
Economize their strength by flying back.

Ex-champion of Freedom, battle-lunged,
No more, red-handed, or at least red-tongued,
Brandish the javelin which by others thrown
Clove Sambo’s heart to quiver in your own! 
Confess no more that when his blood was shed,
And you so sympathetically bled,
The bow that spanned the mutual cascade
Was but the promise of a roaring trade
In offices.  Your fingering now the trigger
Shows that you knew your Negro was a nigger!
Ad hominem this argumentum runs: 
Peace!—­let us fire another kind of guns.

I grant you, friend, that it is very true
The Blacks are ignorant—­and sable, too. 
What then?  One way of two a fool must vote,
And either way with gentlemen of note
Whose villain feuds the fact attest too well
That pedagogues nor vice nor error quell. 
The fiercest controversies ever rage
When Miltons and Salmasii engage.