all that he has got, that thou mayst indulge in drunkenness, help the brewer to buy a new coach, a pair of fine horses, a new dray, and a fine building, that he may live in idleness all his days; likewise to enable the landlord to purchase a new sign to place over his door, with "Licensed to be drunk on the premises" written thereon.
Adapted from an English publication.
HOW THE CATS WENT TO BOARDING-SCHOOL.
In the good old days when I was young,
Which nobody but myself has sung,
There was in the town where I was born
A boarding-school which was so forlorn,
The townsfolk called it, making merry,
The Female Penitentiary.
The walls were of brick, and high and thin,
And the winter winds howled out and in;
A row of scrawniest locust trees
Stood by the house and creaked their knees;
Another row, in the yard behind,
Had died long since, but still stood, twined
With knotty clothes-line; high in their tops
Were four kite tails and ragged old mops,
As dismal sight as was ever seen.
Some stunted quince trees grew up between,
Mildewed and blue, with but two or three
Quinces a year on each poor old tree;
And these on a tumble-down stone wall,
And a neighbor's yellow cat, were all
That the poor girls saw from morn till night,
For the blinds in front were kept shut tight.
The butcher stopped there but once a week,
And of what he left would never speak;
But the girls who, when they first went in,
Were round and fat, grew hollow and thin;
And no maids, however stout and strong,
Could be hired to stay and work there long;
They went away, and with look of dread,
They crossed themselves if a word were said
Of how the Miss Grimkins kept their school
Under a cruel, inhuman rule.
At last from a city at the West,
There came a girl not like the rest.
She broke their rules, and she laughed at them;
In vain they tried the tide to stem,
Which filled their school with impudent glee.
She was so rich that they dared not be
As severe with her as they had been
With other girls; so many a sin
They made believe that they did not know,
Till, finally, she could come and go
As much as she liked throughout the town,
And came to be held in great renown
As the girl who had first broken through,
In spite of all that Grimkins could do.
Such suppers at night, such stolen talks,
Such serenades, flirtations, and walks-
Not a boy in town but was her friend,
And would fight her battles to the end.
Alas for human ingratitude!
The poor Miss Grimkins, they got no good
For winking at all her wicked tricks,
And lavishing all their rhetorics
Of flattery on her: quite too well
She understood them; she took an ell
For all the inches they gave, and yet
Resolved at the first chance she could get
She would make of them such laughing-stock
That they would never forget the shock.
The day she chose was the closing day
Of the term, when the Grimkins had a way
Of asking in the old trustees,
Whom of course they much desired to please,
And setting a supper bountiful,
So rich and good that it pulled the wool
Quite over the old trusteemen's eyes,
Who smacked their lips and said, "What a prize
The oldest Miss Grimkins really is!
What lucky girls! How wonderful 'tis
To find a woman so good at books
Who also keeps such excellent cooks."
All day the smell of the roast and boil
Rose up to the rooms, and poured like oil
On fires of wrath and hunger which raged
In all the girls, and were ill assuaged
By the scraps of pork and withered beans
Which were served for them behind the scenes.
But vengeance they knew was coming soon,
How the moments dragged that afternoon!
By eight o'clock, in all dark lanes,
Boys were to be seen in shouting trains.
Each boy on his shoulder had a bag,
Which seemed so queerly to sway and sag,
Nobody could guess what they had got;
They would not tell what they were about;
But in spite of all their loud halloos,
They could not quite drown the squeaks and mews
Which told of tortures of stifling cats,
And rejoiced the hearts of listening rats.
A vial of ether each boy kept
Hid in his hand, as he slyly crept
Under the school-room windows, and hung
His bag to a long, stout rope which swung
From the second story. One good dose
Of ether, under each cat's nose
Was enough to keep her still;
And the girls above pulled with a will.
Cat after cat, hand over hand-
Oh! never was mischief better planned.
Twenty-five cats-a cat to a girl-
Went through the air in a dizzy whirl;
And then the boys sat down in the dark,
Lying in wait to chuckle and hark.
In the great west room the old trustees
And the Grimkins sat, eating at ease
Turkeys and chickens, oysters and hams,
Pies and sweet-cakes, jellies and jams.
Each girl, like a ghost, in long night-gown,
Ran with her cat, and setting it down
Close to the dining-room doorway, fled,
And in one jiffy was snug in bed.
The cats, between ether and the fright,
Felt most uncommonly like a fight,
And in less than the time I take to tell
This story, they all began, pell-mell,
To scratch and to bite, to fly and spit,
With frightful yells. The girls were fit
To burst with laughing; and when the noise
Began to be heard outside, the boys
Began to scream, and whistle, and “yaow,”
As only bad boys and cats know how.
A rash trusteeman opened the door,
And the din grew fiercer than before,
For the cats rushed in and plunged about,
And no one knew how to drive them out.
The old nun Grimkins fainted away,
And a cat jumped on her as she lay
Full length on the chair, and scratched her face,
And tore her hair in a dreadful place,
Where 'twas only fastened on with thread
To cover a bald spot on her head.
As soon as the cats smelled out the meat,
They mewed the louder for some to eat.
They stood on hind legs and clawed and clung,
And pulled at the table-cloth, and sprung
Over each other, and bit and scratched.
The poor trusteemen were overmatched;
The youngest Miss Grimkins hysterics had,
And finally every soul was glad
To jump up in chairs and cry, "Shoo! shoo!"
But the cats knew this was "bugaboo !"
And matters went on from bad to worse,
Till language couldn't the scene rehearse;
And if old Grimkins hadn't come to,
And clearly seen the one thing to do,
They might have stood on their chairs all night—
Trustees and all-in a sorry plight.
An heroic deed it was she did,
One turkey from off its plate she slid-
A whole one, a fat one, crisp and brown;
With many a sigh she held it down
Where the cats could see and snuff it well;
Then opened the window-plump it fell!
And out went the cats by twos and threes--
Heads over heels and down on their knees.
When the boys who lingered still about,
Saw this, they set up a deafening shout,
And the girls in bed began to quake,
Knowing that Grimkins now would make
A search in their rooms.
Pale with the fright
And pale with her wrath, she took a light,
That awful Grimkins, and stalked away
Up the long stairs, all fierce for the fray.
With heavy hand she opened the doors;
But everywhere such innocent snores,
And eyes with such hermetical seals!
Although she clattered her angry heels,
Not a single girl was found awake,
And so Miss Grimkins thought best to take
Her way down stairs with much less noise,
And pretend that she believed the boys
Had played the trick.
But the feast was spoiled. Poor Grimkins! In vain they smiled and toiled
To seem at ease. The trustecmen smiled
And toiled, too, but were not beguiled.
They little ate, and departed soon,
And the girls a dinner had, next noon,
Better than ever before or since-
A good enough dinner for a prince.
The poor Miss Grimkins they went away
In less than a year; for, from that day,
They could not stir out, by day or night,
But cats followed them, left and right,
Till citizens laughed with shouts and roars.
The night they left, the old house burnt down;
And a few years after that the town,
Buying the lot cheap at trustees' sale,
Built on the spot a strong stone jail,
And called it always, making merry,
'The Grimkins' Penitentiary."
XERXES AT THE HELLESPONT.-R. C. TRENCH.
"Calm is now that stormy water,-it has learned to fear my wrath:
Lashed and fettered, now it yields me for my hosts an easy path!"
Seven long days did Persia's monarch on the Hellespontine shore,
Throned in state, behold his armies without pause defiling o'er;
Only on the eighth the rearward to the other side were past,-
Then one haughty glance of triumph far as eye could reach he cast;
Far as eye could reach he saw them, multitudes equipped
Medians with their bows and quivers, linkéd armor and tiar: From beneath the sun of Afric, from the snowy hills of Thrace,
And from India's utmost borders, nations gathered in one place:
At a single mortal's bidding all this pomp of war unfurled,All in league against the freedom and the one hope of the world!
"What though once some petty trophies from my captains thou hast won,
Think not, Greece, to see another such a day as Marathon: Wilt thou dare await the conflict, or in battle hope to stand, When the lord of sixty nations takes himself his cause in hand?
Lo! they come, and mighty rivers, which they drink of once, are dried;
And the wealthiest cities beggared, that for them one meal provide.
Powers of number by their numbers infinite are overborne, So I measure men by measure, as a husbandınan his corn.
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