“Oh!  Billy, we’re going to kill and eat you,
      So undo the button of your chemie.” 
    When Bill received this information
      He used his pocket-handkerchie.

   “First let me say my catechism,
      Which my poor mammy taught to me.” 
   “Make haste, make haste,” says guzzling Jimmy
      While Jack pulled out his snickersnee.

    So Billy went up to the main-topgallant mast,
      And down he fell on his bended knee. 
    He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment
      When up he jumps, “There’s land I see.

   “Jerusalem and Madagascar,
      And North and South Amerikee: 
    There’s the British flag a-riding at anchor,
      With Admiral Napier, K.C.B.”

    So when they got aboard of the Admiral’s
      He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee;
    But as for little Bill, he made him
      The Captain of a Seventy-three.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

 THE BUTTERFLY AND THE BEE.

“The Butterfly and the Bee,” by William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), is recommended by some school-girls.  It carries a lesson in favour of the worker.

    Methought I heard a butterfly
      Say to a labouring bee: 
   “Thou hast no colours of the sky
      On painted wings like me.”

   “Poor child of vanity! those dyes,
      And colours bright and rare,”
    With mild reproof, the bee replies,
     “Are all beneath my care.

   “Content I toil from morn to eve,
      And scorning idleness,
    To tribes of gaudy sloth I leave
      The vanity of dress.”

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.

 AN INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP.

“An Incident of the French Camp,” by Robert Browning (1812-89), is included in this volume out of regard to a boy of eight years who did not care for many poems, but this one stirred his heart to its depths.

    You know, we French storm’d Ratisbon: 
      A mile or so away
    On a little mound, Napoleon
      Stood on our storming-day;
    With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
      Legs wide, arms lock’d behind,
    As if to balance the prone brow
      Oppressive with its mind.

    Just as perhaps he mus’d “My plans
      That soar, to earth may fall,
    Let once my army leader Lannes
      Waver at yonder wall,”—­
    Out ’twixt the battery smokes there flew
      A rider, bound on bound
    Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
      Until he reach’d the mound.

    Then off there flung in smiling joy,
      And held himself erect
    By just his horse’s mane, a boy: 
      You hardly could suspect—­
    (So tight he kept his lips compress’d,
      Scarce any blood came through)
    You look’d twice ere you saw his breast
      Was all but shot in two.