So now, “Indiana, of Royal Arch News,”
 You’ve taken great pains to give us your views;
 I take up the gauntlet, and venture reply;
 I stop not to argue, but simply defy.

 You say in one case one had better be dead
 Than with a good woman in wedlock be wed: 
 But somewhere I’ve read your kind do not die;
 But passing from earth, ’are hung up to dry.”

 Besotted with whiskey,—­unfitting to tell,
 Even Satan himself avoiding the “smell;”
 Before then we part, I would bid you adieu,
 Reform while you may—­begin life anew.

 If you have a surplus—­like Lady Vere,
 Please pass them around, turn them over to me;
 “A la Hobson”—­I’d venture to sample the store,
 And look o’er the field—­yes! and “hanker” for more. 
Sparta, Mo.  D. E. GRAYSTON.

“God bless our Carrie nation.”

 May she live to see the day,
 When the liquor traffic will be no more,
 When the traffic of the devil
 Will all be swept away
 And God’s peace remain supreme from shore to shore.

 God bless the hatchet wielder,
 May it never cease to strike,
 Till it drives the cursed intemperance from our land
 Let us stand for God and duty,
 Till we gain the Eden of beauty
 And be what God designed for us,
 A happy union band.

 God bless our Carrie Nation,
 Give her courage, strength, and might,
 To go forth in former battlements arrayed. 
 Till this cursed intemperance,
 Will be driven from our shore,
 From every village, hamlet and the glade.

 O, God raise up a million,
 Of our Carrie Nation minds,
 That they may fight for freedom, from the thrall. 
 Let’s join our hands with Carrie
 And do not let us tarry,
 Oh, let us toil for Jesus one and all.

AMERICA’S HISTORIC HATCHET.

 Ere Yankee Doodle came to town,
     And routed king and tory,
 Three words sublime were writ by time
     To live in song and story;
 “George Washington”—­immortal name
     There’s few or none can match it;
 His father’s favorite cherry tree,
     And “George’s little hatchet.”

 In Boston’s harbor next we trace
     The little hatchet’s story;
 In smashing up the Crown’s tea-chests,
     It won a crown of glory. 
 And every time Wrong shows his head,
     That weapon “bald doth snatch it,
 For patriot hands are ever found
     To wield the “Yankee hatchet.”

 A century and more has passed,
     With blooms and blizzards blowing
 O’er Kansas’ plains—­where corn and grains,
     ’Round happy homes are growing;
 Where statutes pure close each “joint” door,
     Forbidding to unlatch it,
 There, in the fight, defending Right,
     We find our “loyal hatchet.”