ANON.

  Sir Walter Raleigh! name of worth,
    How sweet for thee to know
  King James, who never smoked on earth,
    Is smoking down below.

THE SMOKER’S CALENDAR.

  When January’s cold appears,
  A glowing pipe my spirit cheers;
  And still it glads the length’ning day
  ’Neath February’s milder sway. 
  When March’s keener winds succeed,
  What charms me like the burning weed
  When April mounts the solar car,
  I join him, puffing a cigar;
  And May, so beautiful and bright,
  Still finds the pleasing weed a-light. 
  To balmy zephyrs it gives zest
  When June in gayest livery’s drest. 
  Through July, Flora’s offspring smile,
  But still Nicotia’s can beguile;
  And August, when its fruits are ripe,
  Matures my pleasure in a pipe. 
  September finds me in the garden,
  Communing with a long churchwarden. 
  Even in the wane of dull October
  I smoke my pipe and sip my “robar.” 
  November’s soaking show’rs require
  The smoking pipe and blazing fire. 
  The darkest day in drear December’s—­
  That’s lighted by their glowing embers.

ANON.

AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE.

  As one who cons at evening o’er an album all alone,
  And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
  So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till in shadowy design
  I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

  The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
  As I turn it low, to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
  And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
  Its fate with my tobacco, and to vanish with the smoke.

  ’Tis a fragrant retrospection, for the loving thoughts that start
  Into being are like perfumes from the blossom of the heart;
  And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine—­
  When my truant fancies wander with that old sweetheart of mine.

  Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,
  The voices of my children and the mother as she sings,
  I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any theme
  When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream.

  In fact, to speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm
  To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm;
  For I find an extra flavor in Memory’s mellow wine
  That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of mine.

  A face of lily-beauty, with a form of airy grace,
  Floats out of my tobacco as the genii from the vase;
  And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes,
  As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies.

  I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress
  She wore when first I kissed her, and she answered the caress
  With the written declaration that, “as surely as the vine
  Grew round the stump,” she loved me,—­that old sweetheart of mine!