If we aren't home for lunch at two
I don't know what papa will do;

But I know full well he will say to me,

'I never approved of Mr. B.;

It's the very devil that you and he

Ride, ride together, forever ride."

James Kenneth Stephen.

IMITATION OF WALT WHITMAN

WHO am I?

I have been reading Walt Whitman, and know not whether he be me, or me he;

Or otherwise!

Oh, blue skies! oh, rugged mountains! oh, mighty, rolling Niagara!

O, chaos and everlasting bosh!

I am a poet; I swear it! If you do not believe it you are a dolt, a fool, an idiot!

Milton, Shakespere, Dante, Tommy Moore, Pope, never, but Byron, too, perhaps, and last, not least, Me, and the Poet Close.

We send our resonance echoing down the adamantine cañons of the future!

We live forever! The worms who criticise us (asses!) laugh, scoff, jeer, and babble-die!

Serve them right.

What is the difference between Judy, the pride of Fleet Street, the glory of Shoe Lane, and Walt Whitman? Start not! 'Tis no end of a minstrel show who perpends

this query;

'Tis no brain-racking puzzle from an inner page of the Family Herald,

No charade, acrostic (double or single), conundrum, riddle, rebus, anagram, or other guess-work.

I answer thus: We both write truths-great, stern, solemn, unquenchable truths-couched in more or less ridiculous language.

Imitation of Walt Whitman

435

I, as a rule use rhyme, he does not; therefore, I am his Superior (which is also a lake in his great and glorious country).

I scorn, with the unutterable scorn of the despiser of pettiness, to take a mean advantage of him.

He writes, he sells, he is read (more or less); why then should I rack my brains and my rhyming dictionary? I will see the public hanged first!

I sing of America, of the United States, of the stars and stripes of Oskhosh, of Kalamazoo, and of Salt Lake City.

I sing of the railroad cars, of the hotels, of the breakfasts, the lunches, the dinners, and the suppers;

Of the soup, the fish, the entrées, the joints, the game, the puddings and the ice-cream.

I sing all-I eat all-I sing in turn of Dr. Bluffem's Antibilious Pills.

No subject is too small, too insignificant, for Nature's poet. I sing of the cocktail, a new song for every cocktail, hundreds of songs, hundreds of cocktails.

It is a great and a glorious land! The Mississippi, the Missouri, and a million other torrents roll their waters to the ocean.

It is a great and glorious land! The Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Rockies (see atlas for other mountain ranges too numerous to mention) pierce the clouds!

And the greatest and most glorious product of this great and glorious land is Walt Whitman;

This must be so, for he says it himself.

There is but one greater than he between the rising and the setting sun.

There is but one before whom he meekly bows his humbled head.

Oh, great and glorious land, teeming producer of all things, creator of Niagara, and inventor of Walt Whitman, Erase your national advertisements of liver pads and cures for rheumatism from your public monuments, and inscribe thereon in letters of gold the name Judy.

Unknown.

SALAD

O COOL in the summer is salad,

And warm in the winter is love; And a poet shall sing you a ballad Delicious thereon and thereof. A singer am I, if no sinner,

My muse has a marvellous wing, And I willingly worship at dinner The Sirens of Spring.

Take endive-like love it is bitter,
Take beet-for like love it is red;
Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter,
And cress from the rivulet's bed;
Anchovies, foam-born, like the lady

Whose beauty has maddened this bard;
And olives, from groves that are shady;
And eggs-boil 'em hard.

Mortimer Collins.

IF

IF life were never bitter,

And love were always sweet,
Then who would care to borrow
A moral from to-morrow-
If Thames would always glitter,
And joy would ne'er retreat,
If life were never bitter,

And love were always sweet!

If care were not the waiter
Behind a fellow's chair,

When easy-going sinners

Sit down to Richmond dinners,
And life's swift stream flows straighter,

By Jove, it would be rare,
If care were not the waiter

Behind a fellow's chair.

The Jabberwocky of Authors

If wit were always radiant,

And wine were always iced,

And bores were kicked out straightway
Through a convenient gateway;

Then down the year's long gradient

'Twere sad to be enticed,

If wit were always radiant,

And wine were always iced.

437

Mortimer Collins.

THE JABBERWOCKY OF AUTHORS

'TWAS gilbert. The kchesterton

Did locke and bennett in the reed. All meredith was the nicholson,

And harrison outqueed.

Beware the see-enn-william, son,
The londonjack with call that's wild.
Beware the gertroo datherton

And richardwashburn child.

He took his brady blade in hand;
Long time the partridge foe he sought.
Then stood a time by the oppenheim
In deep mcnaughton thought.

In warwick deeping thought he stood-
He poised on edithwharton brink;
He cried, "Ohbernardshaw! I could
If basilking would kink.”

Rexbeach! rexbeach!-and each on each

O. Henry's mantles ferber fell. It was the same'sif henryjames Had wally eaton well.

"And hast thou writ the greatest book?
Come to thy birmingham, my boy!
Oh, beresford way! Oh, holman day!"
He kiplinged in his joy.

'Twas gilbert. The kchesterton

Did locke and bennett in the reed.

All meredith was the nicholson,

And harrison outqueed.

Harry Persons Taber.

THE TOWN OF NICE

MAY, 1874

THE town of Nice! the town of Nice!
Where once mosquitoes buzzed and stung,
And never gave me any peace,

The whole year round when I was young!
Eternal winter chills it yet,

It's always cold, and mostly wet.

Lord Brougham sate on the rocky brow,
Which looks on sea-girt Cannes, I wis,
But wouldn't like to sit there now,
Unless 'twere warmer than it is;

I went to Cannes the other day,
But found it much too damp to stay.

The mountains look on Monaco,
And Monaco looks on the sea;
And, playing there some hours ago,
I meant to win enormously;

But, tho' my need of coin was bad
I lost the little that I had.

Ye have the southern charges yet-
Where is the southern climate gone?

Of two such blessings, why forget
The cheaper and the seemlier one?
My weekly bill my wrath inspires;
Think ye I meant to pay for fires?