“No sooner was he seated than
The members rose up, to a man. 
Each chap was primed with a reply
And tried to snatch the Chairman’s eye. 
They stomped and shook their fists in air,
And, O, what words was uttered there!

“The Chair was silent, but at last
He hove up his proportions vast
And stilled them tumults with a look
By which the undauntedest was shook. 
He smiled sarcastical and said: 
’If Argus was the Chair, instead
Of me, he’d lack enough of eyes
Each orator to recognize! 
And since, denied a hearing, you
Might maybe undertake to do
Each other harm before you cease,
I’ve took some steps to keep the peace: 
I’ve ordered out—­alas, alas,
That Science e’er to such a pass
Should come!—­I’ve ordered out—­the gas!’

“O if a tongue or pen of fire
Was mine I could not tell entire
What the ensuin’ actions was. 
When swollered up in darkness’ jaws
We fit and fit and fit and fit,
And everything we felt we hit! 
We gouged, we scratched and we pulled hair,
And O, what words was uttered there! 
And when at last the day dawn came
Three hundred Scientists was lame;
Two hundred others couldn’t stand,
They’d been so careless handled, and
One thousand at the very least
Was spread upon the floor deceased! 
’Twere easy to exaggerate,
But lies is things I mortal hate.

“Such, friends, is the disaster sad
Which has befel the Cal.  Acad. 
And now the question is of more
Importance than it was before: 
Shall vacancies among us be
To idiots threw open free?”

FLEET STROTHER

What! you were born, you animated doll,
Within the shadow of the Capitol? 
’Twas always thought (and Bancroft so assures
His trusting readers) it was reared in yours.

CALIFORNIAN SUMMER PICTURES

THE FOOT-HILL RESORT

Assembled in the parlor
  Of the place of last resort,
The smiler and the snarler
  And the guests of every sort—­
    The elocution chap
    With rhetoric on tap;
  The mimic and the funny dog;
  The social sponge; the money-hog;
    Vulgarian and dude;
    And the prude;
  The adiposing dame
  With pimply face aflame;
  The kitten-playful virgin—­
    Vergin’ on to fifty years;
  The solemn-looking sturgeon
    Of a firm of auctioneers;
  The widower flirtatious;
  The widow all too gracious;
The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath. 
One assassin picks the banjo, and another picks his teeth.

AT ANCHOR

The soft asphaltum in the sun;
Betrays a tendency to run;
Whereas the dog that takes his way
Across its course concludes to stay.

THE IN-COMING CLIMATE