A like amount, for each succeeding day,
Tells on the book, but wears his life away.

Saturday's charge makes out the account complete,
"To cloth, five yards, to make a winding-sheet." *
There, all stands fair, without mistake or flaw,
How honest trade will thrive, UPHELD BY LAW!

A FRAGMENT.

THE dealer at wholesale declares he's a friend
To the temperance cause, and his aid he will lend
To moderate measures, that won't interfere
With his rum-gotten profits of thousands a year.
He sells by the hogshead, and thinks he's a saint,
Compared with the fellows who sell by the pint.

99

The retailer too, as he stands at his bar,
Declares we are going too fast and too far r;
Expresses his sympathy for the "good cause
By cursing fanatics and temperance laws.
He's for temperance too, you'll hear him declare,
Yet beats up recruits for the pit of despair.

The drunkard, encouraged, now rouses his spunk,
And boasts of a "nateral right" to get drunk;
Declares, as they're bent on abridging that right,
He will still drink his toddy, if only "for spite."
And while he insists he's a temperance man,
Cries, "Down with that ultra, fanat — hic al clan."

* A friend of the author, residing in Coventry, R. I., came into possession of the leaf of an account book, on which a poor drunkard had been charged with a quart of gin a day, for five successive days. On the night of the fifth day, he died in a drunken fit; and the charge on the rum-seller's book for the sixth day was, "to cloth, five yards, for windingsheet."

13

CRACK UP! CRACK UP!!

SOME few years since, the author had occasion to spend the night at the village of Woonsocket, R. I., and as there was no public house in the village kept on temperance principles, he was under the necessity of taking lodgings at a hotel where intoxicating drinks were furnished to all who desired them. Just after the clock had struck the hour of nine, some very respectable looking gentlemen, who were sitting around the bar-room fire, engaged in an exercise which they called “cracking up." The object of the game seemed to be, to determine which of the individuals should pay for the drink of the company. The important question was decided by the tossing up of a piece of money, and its fall near to or remote from a certain crack in the floor previously designated. The services of the bar-keeper were then required to prepare for the party some intoxicating compound, which was swallowed by them with evident gusto. It was suggested to the mind of the writer, while the scene described was passing before him, that the individuals thus engaged did not, in their minds, associate their practices with the probable consequences to those connected with them by the most tender ties. The following article, which was written in the bar-room, immediately after witnessing the interesting ceremony, and which found place in the village paper the following day, was intended to suggest to them the probable consequences of their recklessness and folly.

Crack up! crack up! the clock strikes nine;
We have not drank for half an hour.

Say, will ye choose, or rum, or wine,
Or brandy's stimulating power?

Come, fill the glass,

And let it pass,

Till sorrow, care, and thought are gone,

And exiled reason quits her throne

Come, jovial boys, crack up! crack up!
And fill again the maddening cup.
What though our wives sit quite alone,
And muse on hopes and pleasures gone?
Though bitter thoughts their bosoms burn
The while they wait for our return
Let all that pass;

Come, fill the glass;

We'll drink to love that never dies,
Till from our breasts affection flies.

Crack up! crack up! come, fill again
The accursed cup with liquid fire;
And now, its contents let us drain
To sleeping babes and hoary sire;
To mother dear, though drowned in tears,
And bending with the weight of years.
Bid sorrow flee,

And drink with glee;

Though babes may need a father's care,
From wretchedness and want to save,
And though we bring the time-bleached hair
Of parents sorrowing to the grave,

Come, fill again the accursed cup,

And let us drain. Crack up! crack up!

STRANGULATION; OR, THE DISTILLER'S DISASTER.

A GRIST FROM JEMMY'S MILL, GROUND MAY 1ST, 1845.

A NOTED distiller of Boston fell into one of his fermenting vats, a few days previous to the appearance of the following article, and was dragged from it by the hands of his workmen in the establishment, but for whose timely interference, he must have lost his life by strangulation.

Doctor. Jemmy, have you learned that a celebrated distiller fell into one of his fermenting vats, a few days since, and came near losing his life by strangulation?

Jemmy. Indaad, I did. I read it in the paper; and whin I told the matter to Michael McGowan's wife, she foch'd a scrame, and slapped her two big hands togither, and rin capering about the room like as if she'd been half mad. "What ails you? said I. "What ails you?" said she, pouting out her lips, and spaking my own words in a kind of mockin way. "Botheration to ye! Doesn't them same distillers make the vile crathur that pits strangulation down the necks of paple more dacent and honest nor themselves? Didn't my own cousin Tim Taggerty-rest his sowl!-drink the liquor till it made him crazy entirely; and then put a rope on his neck, and hang up in the barn; and wasn't that strangulation? Didn't Betty Cragin, whin she was drunk, roll her baste of a carcass on her own swate baby, that wasn't more nor sax weeks old, and smother the life out of it? What was it but strangulation? And now, jist because the distiller of all this divilment got a small taste of his own midicin, they pit it in the papers, and make such a hellaballoo

Dr. Hold, Jemmy! I have no time to hear more of Mistress McGowan's lecture on strangulation; but, as you seem to be quite interested in the matter, suppose you put the facts in your patent rhyme-grinder, and turn out something for the Journal.

Jem. Faix! I'll do it.

[He brings out the machine, and commences operations.]

I'll sing you a song that is rare and queer,
Of a nager that fell in a vat of beer,

Which was rendered so fine, as he slowly decayed,
That the liquor was praised,

Its price was much raised,

The business increased, and a fortune was made.

Dr. Jim, you make strange work. You were going to grind out a song from facts that occurred in this western world, and your very first verse is about an old affair that happened twenty years ago, on the other side of the Atlantic. Jem. Never mind, doctor, jewel. I'll come to it directly. [He turns again.]

One Haman, the Scriptures relate,

Got mad at the Jew Mordecai,

And built for him, outside the gate,

A gallows some fifty feet high.

"Ha! ha!" said his wife, "they will yet learn to fear us-
These stiff-necked obstinate Jews:

Now go to the party with Ahasuerus,
Be cheerful, and banish the blues;
Come, hurry, my honey,
Drink wine, and be funny."

He went - and, bad luck to him!-made such a bother,
He got himself hanged jist, instead of the other!
And he couldn't complain of the way it was done,
For they let down the drap on a plan of his own.

Dr. Worse and worse, Jemmy! You are farther from