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  “How sad,” he said, and dropped a tear
    Splash on the cabin roof,
  “That we are dry, while he is there
    Without a waterproof.

  “We’ll get him up on board at once;
    For Science teaches me,
  He will be wet if he remains
    Much longer in the sea.”

  They fished him out; the First Mate wept,
    And came with rugs and ale: 
  The Boatswain brought him one golosh,
    And fixed it on his tail.

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  But yet he never loved the ship;
    Against the mast he’d lean;
  If spoken to, he coughed and smiled,
    And blushed a pallid green.

  Though plied with hardbake, beef and beer,
    He showed no wish to sup: 
  The neatest riddles they could ask,
    He always gave them up.

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  They seized him and court-martialled him,
    In some excess of spleen,
  For lack of social sympathy,
    (Victoria xii. 18).

  They gathered every evidence
    That might remove a doubt: 
  They wrote a postcard in his name,
    And partly scratched it out.

  Till, when his guilt was clear as day,
    With all formality
  They doomed the traitor to be drowned,
    And threw him in the sea.

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  The flashing sunset, as he sank,
    Made every scale a gem;
  And, turning with a graceful bow,
    He kissed his fin to them.

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MORAL.

  I am, I think I have remarked,
    Terrifically old,
  (The second Ice-age was a farce,
    The first was rather cold.)

  A friend of mine, a trilobite
    Had gathered in his youth,
  When trilobites were trilobites,
    This all-important truth.

  We aged ones play solemn parts—­
    Sire—­guardian—­uncle—­king. 
  Affection is the salt of life,
    Kindness a noble thing.

  The old alone may comprehend
    A sense in my decree;
  But—­if you find a fish on land,
    Oh throw it in the sea.

* * * * *

ON THE DISASTROUS SPREAD OF AESTHETICISM IN ALL CLASSES.

  Impetuously I sprang from bed,
    Long before lunch was up,
  That I might drain the dizzy dew
    From day’s first golden cup.

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  In swift devouring ecstacy
    Each toil in turn was done;
  I had done lying on the lawn
    Three minutes after one.

  For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
    The duties shine like stars;
  I formed my uncle’s character,
    Decreasing his cigars.

  But could my kind engross me?  No! 
    Stern Art—­what sons escape her? 
  Soon I was drawing Gladstone’s nose
    On scraps of blotting paper.