Then Robert Morrow was seen to smile
  With a bright and lively joyance. 
“A man,” said he, “that is free from guile
  Will now be free from annoyance.

“The Featherstones doubtless will now increase
  And multiply like the rabbits,
While jailers, deputy sheriffs, police,
  And writers will form good habits.

“The widows more easily robbed will be,
  And no juror will ever heed ’em,
But open his purse to my eloquent plea
  For security, gain, or freedom.”

When Benson heard of the luck of the good
  (He was eating his dinner) he muttered: 
“It cannot help me, for ’tis understood
  My bread is already buttered.

“My plats of surveys are all false, they say,
  But that cannot greatly matter
To me, for I’ll tell the jurors that they
  May lick, if they please, my platter.”

ARBORICULTURE

[Californians are asking themselves how Joaquin Miller will make the trees grow which he proposes to plant in the form of a Maltese cross on Goat Island, in San Francisco Bay.—­New York Graphic.]

You may say they won’t grow, and say they’ll decay—­
Say it again till you’re sick of the say,
Get up on your ear, blow your blaring bazoo
And hire a hall to proclaim it; and you
May stand on a stump with a lifted hand
As a pine may stand or a redwood stand,
And stick to your story and cheek it through. 
But I point with pride to the far divide
Where the Snake from its groves is seen to glide—­
To Mariposa’s arboreal suit,
And the shaggy shoulders of Shasta Butte,
And the feathered firs of Siskiyou;
And I swear as I sit on my marvelous hair—­
I roll my marvelous eyes and swear,
And sneer, and ask where would your forests be
To-day if it hadn’t been for me! 
Then I rise tip-toe, with a brow of brass,
Like a bully boy with an eye of glass;
I look at my gum sprouts, red and blue,
And I say it loud and I say it low: 
“They know their man and you bet they’ll grow!”

A SILURIAN HOLIDAY

’Tis Master Fitch, the editor;
  He takes an holiday. 
Now wherefore, venerable sir,
  So resolutely gay?

He lifts his head, he laughs aloud,
  Odzounds! ’tis drear to see! 
“Because the Boodle-Scribbler crowd
  Will soon be far from me.

“Full many a year I’ve striven well
  To freeze the caitiffs out
By making this good town a Hell,
  But still they hang about.

“They maken mouths and eke they grin
  At the dollar limit game;
And they are holpen in that sin
  By many a wicked dame.

“In sylvan bowers hence I’ll dwell
  My bruised mind to ease. 
Farewell, ye urban scenes, farewell! 
  Hail, unfamiliar trees!”

Forth Master Fitch did bravely hie,
  And all the country folk
Besought him that he come not nigh
  The deadly poison oak!