Black Beetles in Amber Part 30

"O if a tongue or pen of fire Was mine I could not tell entire What the ensuin' actions was.

When swollered up in darkness' jaws We fit and fit and fit and fit, And everything we felt we hit!

We gouged, we scratched and we pulled hair, And O, what words was uttered there!

And when at last the day dawn came Three hundred Scientists was lame; Two hundred others couldn't stand, They'd been so careless handled, and One thousand at the very least Was spread upon the floor deceased!

'Twere easy to exaggerate, But lies is things I mortal hate.

"Such, friends, is the disaster sad Which has befel the Cal. Acad.

And now the question is of more Importance than it was before: Shall vacancies among us be To idiots threw open free?"

FLEET STROTHER

What! you were born, you animated doll, Within the shadow of the Capitol?

'Twas always thought (and Bancroft so a.s.sures His trusting readers) it was reared in yours.

CALIFORNIAN SUMMER PICTURES

THE FOOT-HILL RESORT

a.s.sembled in the parlor Of the place of last resort, The smiler and the snarler And the guests of every sort-- The elocution chap With rhetoric on tap; The mimic and the funny dog; The social sponge; the money-hog; Vulgarian and dude; And the prude; The adiposing dame With pimply face aflame; The kitten-playful virgin-- Vergin' on to fifty years; The solemn-looking sturgeon Of a firm of auctioneers; The widower flirtatious; The widow all too gracious; The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath.

One a.s.sa.s.sin picks the banjo, and another picks his teeth.

AT ANCHOR

The soft asphaltum in the sun; Betrays a tendency to run; Whereas the dog that takes his way Across its course concludes to stay.

THE IN-COMING CLIMATE

Now o' nights the ocean breeze Makes the patient flinch, For that zephyr bears a sneeze In every cubic inch.

Lo! the lively population Chorusing in sternutation A catarrhal acclamation!

A LONG-FELT WANT

Dimly apparent, through the gloom Of Market-street's opaque simoom, A queue of people, parti-s.e.xed, Awaiting the command of "Next!"

A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign: "Teeth dusted nice--five cents a shine."

TO THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

Wide windy reaches of high stubble field; A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines; A wagon moving in a "cloud by day."

Two city sportsmen with a dove between, Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep-- A solitary dove, the only dove In twenty counties, and it sick, or else It were not there. Two guns that fire as one, With thunder simultaneous and loud; Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone!

And later, in the gloaming, comes a man-- The worthy local coroner is he, Renowned all thereabout, and popular With many a remain. All tenderly Compiling in a game-bag the debris, He glides into the gloom and fades from sight.

The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock, Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet, To die of age in some far foreign land.

SLANDER

FITCH:

"All vices you've exhausted, friend; So all the papers say."

PICKERING:

"Ah, what vile calumnies are penned!-- 'Tis just the other way."

JAMES L. FLOOD

As oft it happens in the youth of day That mists obscure the sun's imperfect ray, Who, as he's mounting to the dome's extreme, Smites and dispels them with a steeper beam, So you the vapors that begirt your birth Consumed, and manifested all your worth.

But still one early vice obstructs the light And sullies all the visible and bright Display of mind and character. You write.

FOUR CANDIDATES FOR SENATOR

To flatter your way to the goad of your hope, O plausible Mr. Perkins, You'll need ten tons of the softest soap And b.u.t.ter a thousand firkins.

The soap you could put to a better use In washing your hands of ambition Ere the b.u.t.ter's used for cooking your goose To a beautiful brown condition.

"The Railroad can't run Stanford." That is so-- The tail can't curl the pig; but then, you know, Inside the vegetable-garden's pale The pig will eat more cabbage than the tail.

When Sargent struts by all the lawmakers say: "Right--left!" It is fair to infer The right will get left, nor polar the day When he makes that thing to occur.

Not so, not so, 'tis a joke, that cry-- Foolish and dull and small: He so bores them for votes that they mean to imply He's a drill-Sargent, that is all.

G.o.ds! what a sight! Astride McClure's broad back Estee jogs round the Senatorial track, The crowd all undecided, as they pa.s.s, Whether to cheer the man or cheer the a.s.s.