When preachers tell us all they think,
And party leaders all they mean,—­
When what we pay for, that we drink,
From real grape and coffee-bean,—­

When lawyers take what they would give,
And doctors give what they would take,—­
When city fathers eat to live,
Save when they fast for conscience’ sake,—­

When one that hath a horse on sale
Shall bring his merit to the proof,
Without a lie for every nail
That holds the iron on the hoof,—­

When in the usual place for rips
Our gloves are stitched with special care,
And guarded well the whalebone tips
Where first umbrellas need repair,—­

When Cuba’s weeds have quite forgot
The power of suction to resist,
And claret-bottles harber not
Such dimples as would hold your fist,—­

When publishers no longer steal,
And pay for what they stole before,—­
When the first locomotive’s wheel
Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel’s bore;—­

Till then let Cumming a blaze away,
And Miller’s saints blow up the globe;
But when you see that blessed day,
then order your ascension robe!

The company seemed to like the verses, and I promised them to read others occasionally, if they had a mind to hear them.  Of course they would not expect it every morning.  Neither must the reader suppose that all these things I have reported were said at any one breakfast-time.  I have not taken the trouble to date them, as Raspail, pere, used to date every proof he sent to the printer; but they were scattered over several breakfasts; and I have said a good many more things since, which I shall very possibly print some time or other, if I am urged to do it by judicious friends.

I finished off with reading some verses of my friend the Professor, of whom you may perhaps hear more by and by.  The Professor read them, he told me, at a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great Historians met a few of his many friends at their invitation.

Yes, we knew we must lose him,—­though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
’Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,—­
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,—­
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!

In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!