Now o’ nights the ocean breeze
  Makes the patient flinch,
For that zephyr bears a sneeze
  In every cubic inch. 
Lo! the lively population
Chorusing in sternutation
A catarrhal acclamation!

A LONG-FELT WANT

Dimly apparent, through the gloom
Of Market-street’s opaque simoom,
A queue of people, parti-sexed,
Awaiting the command of “Next!”
A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign: 
“Teeth dusted nice—­five cents a shine.”

TO THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

Wide windy reaches of high stubble field;
A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines;
A wagon moving in a “cloud by day.” 
Two city sportsmen with a dove between,
Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep—­
A solitary dove, the only dove
In twenty counties, and it sick, or else
It were not there.  Two guns that fire as one,
With thunder simultaneous and loud;
Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone! 
And later, in the gloaming, comes a man—­
The worthy local coroner is he,
Renowned all thereabout, and popular
With many a remain.  All tenderly
Compiling in a game-bag the debris,
He glides into the gloom and fades from sight. 
The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock,
Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet,
To die of age in some far foreign land.

SLANDER

FITCH: 

“All vices you’ve exhausted, friend;
  So all the papers say.”

PICKERING: 

“Ah, what vile calumnies are penned!—­
  ’Tis just the other way.”

JAMES L. FLOOD

As oft it happens in the youth of day
That mists obscure the sun’s imperfect ray,
Who, as he’s mounting to the dome’s extreme,
Smites and dispels them with a steeper beam,
So you the vapors that begirt your birth
Consumed, and manifested all your worth. 
But still one early vice obstructs the light
And sullies all the visible and bright
Display of mind and character.  You write.

FOUR CANDIDATES FOR SENATOR

To flatter your way to the goad of your hope,
  O plausible Mr. Perkins,
You’ll need ten tons of the softest soap
  And butter a thousand firkins. 
The soap you could put to a better use
  In washing your hands of ambition
Ere the butter’s used for cooking your goose
  To a beautiful brown condition.

* * * * *

“The Railroad can’t run Stanford.”  That is so—­
  The tail can’t curl the pig; but then, you know,
Inside the vegetable-garden’s pale
  The pig will eat more cabbage than the tail.

* * * * *

When Sargent struts by all the lawmakers say: 
  “Right—­left!” It is fair to infer
The right will get left, nor polar the day
  When he makes that thing to occur.