OYSTERS!

  He stood beside the oysters.  Near him lay
  A dozen raw upon the half-shell:  he
  With fork stood ready to engulf them all,
  When to his side a reverend gray-beard came. 
  Pointing his index finger to the Natives,
  Slowly he spoke, with measured voice and low:—­
  ’They are the same, THE SAME!  I’ve eaten them
  In London, small and coppery; at Ostend,
  A little better; and in the Condotti,
  Yea, in the Lepre—­’tis an eating-house
  Frequented by the many-languaged artists
  Of great imperial Rome.  At Baiae:  also
  I’ve tasted that nice kind described by MARTIAL,
  Who calls them ears of Venus;—­there I’ve had ’em. 
  Also at Memphis—­now I’m coming to it: 
  I’ve seen amid the desert sands of Egypt,
  Exposed among the hieroglyphs, these Natives. 
  (The hieroglyphs, you know, are outward forms
  Of things or creatures which unfold strange myths,
  Read by the common eye in vulgar way,
  But to the learned are types of truths gigantic.)
  Thus unto you those oysters are but bivalves;
  But unto me they’re—­P’raps you’ll stand a dozen?’
  ’Well, I will, old hoss; it seems to me you need ’em!’
  ’Good!  Then to me they are as hieroglyphs
  Of our poor human state; as PLATO says,
  “The soul of man, a substance different from
  The body as the oyster from the shell,
  Does stick to it, and is imprisoned in it. 
  Its weight of shell doth keep it down and force it
  To stay upon its muddy bottom.  So does
  Man’s body hold his soul in these dark regions,
  Keeping it ever steadily from rising
  To those superior heights where are abodes
  More fitting its serene and noble nature.” 
  Good as a quarter-dollar lecture.  Boy! fork over.’ 
  ’Another “doz.” to this old gentleman;
  For I perceive he plainly hath it in him
  To swallow down two dozen oysters’ souls. 
  See what it is to be a philosopher!’

This is indeed finding sermons in ‘shells.’

* * * * *

‘Punning is a power,’ according to somebody, and, like most power, is sadly abused.  Take, for illustration, the following specimen of the ‘narrative pun:’ 

    The reader knows that BYRON once punned on the word Bullet-in, and
    was proud of it; distinctly proud, be it remembered.  After which
    comes the following:—­

Some years ago it was summer time, and in the office of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, one, as the French say, was preparing the daily paper.  Along Third Street streamed Shinners, Bulls, Bears, and Newsboys,—­in the sanctum, Editors wrote and clipped,—­proof rose up and down in the dumb waiter,—­there was the shrill scream of the whistle calling to the foreman far on high,—­

    Suddenly there was a tremendous run in the front office.

    A maddened cow,—­an infuriate, delirious, over-driven
    animal,—­breaking loose from the cow-herdly creature who had her
    in charge,—­careered wildly past the Ledger building.