Would never pay for cabins;)

And each man moaned and jabbered in
His filthy Jewish gabardine,
In woe and lamentation,

And howling consternation.

And the splashing water drenches

Their dirty brats and wenches;

And they crawl from bales and benches,

In a hundred thousand stenches.

This was the white squall famous,
Which latterly o'ercame us,
And which all will well remember,
On the 28th September;

When a Prussian captain of Lancers
(Those tight-laced, whiskered prancers)
Came on the deck astonished,
By that wild squall admonished,

And wondering cried, "Potz tausend,
Wie ist der Stürm jetzt brausend?”
And looked at Captain Lewis,
Who calmly stood and blew his
Cigar in all the bustle,

And scorned the tempest's tussle.
And oft we've thought hereafter
How he beat the storm to laughter;
For well he knew his vessel
With that vain wind could wrestle;
And when a wreck we thought her,
And doomed ourselves to slaughter,

How gayly he fought her,

And through the hubbub brought her,
And as the tempest caught her,

Cried, "George, some brandy and water!"

And when, its force expended,

The harmless storm was ended,
And as the sunrise splendid

Came blushing o'er the sea,-
I thought, as day was breaking,
My little girls were waking,
And smiling, and making
A prayer at home for me.

William Makepeace Thackeray.

THE RATIONALISTIC CHICKEN.

Most strange!

Most queer-although most excellent a change!
Shades of the prison-house, ye disappear!
My fettered thoughts have won a wider range,
And, like my legs, are free;

No longer huddled up so pitiably;

Free now to pry and probe, and peep and peer,
And make these mysteries out.

Shall a free-thinking chicken live in doubt?
For now in doubt undoubtedly I am;

This problem's very heavy on my mind;
And I'm not one to either shirk or sham;

I won't be blinded, and I won't be blind!
Now, let me see:

First, I would know how did I get in there?
Then, where was I of yore?
Besides, why did n't I get out before?
Dear me!

Here are three puzzles (out of plenty more),
Enough to give me pip upon the brain!
But let me think again!

How do I know I ever was inside?

Now I reflect, it is, I do maintain,

Less than my reason, and beneath my pride,
To think that I could dwell

In such a paltry, miserable cell

As that old shell.

Of course I could n't! How could I have lain-
Body and beak and feathers, legs and wings,
And my deep heart's sublime imaginings—

In there?

I meet the notion with profound disdain;

It's quite incredible; since I declare

(And I'm a chicken that you can't deceive),

What I can't understand I won't believe!

Where did I come from, then? Ah, where indeed? This is a riddle monstrous hard to read.

I have it! Why, of course,

All things are moulded by some plastic force

Out of some atoms somewhere up in space,
Fortuitously concurrent anyhow.

There now!

That's plain as is the beak upon my face.
What's that I hear?

My mother cackling at me—just her way,
So prejudiced and ignorant, I say,
So far behind the wisdom of the day.

What's old I can't revere.

Hark at her. "You're a silly chick, my dear,
That's quite as plain, alack!
As is the piece of shell upon your back!"
How bigoted! Upon my back, indeed!
I do n't believe it's there;

For I can't see it; and I do declare,

For all her fond deceivin',

What I can't see I never will believe in!

Anonymous.

A CRITICAL SITUATION.

As Harris and I sat, one morning, at one of the small round tables of the great Hote Schweitzerhof in Lucerne, watching the crowd of people, coming, going, or breakfasting, and at the same time endeavoring to guess where such and such a party came from, I said:

"There is an American party."

"Yes-but name the State."

We agreed upon

I named one State, he named another. one thing, however-that the young girl with the party was very beautiful and very tastefully dressed. But we disagreed as to her age. I said she was eighteen, Harris said she was twenty. The dispute between us waxed warm, and I finally said, with a pretense of being in earnest—

"Well, there is one way to settle the matter-I will go and ask her."

Harris said, sarcastically, "Certainly, that is the thing to do. All you need to do is to use the common formula over here: go and say, 'I'm an American!' Of course, she will

be glad to see you."

Then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger of my venturing to speak to her.

I said, "I was only talking-I did n't intend to approach her, but I see that you do not know what an intrepid person I am. I am not afraid of any woman that walks. I will go and speak to this young girl."

The thing I had in mind was not difficult. I meant to address her in the most respectful way and ask her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former acquaintance of mine was deceiving me; and when she should reply that the name I mentioned was not the name she bore, I meant to beg pardon again, most respectfully, and retire. There would be no harm done. I walked to her table, bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her, and was about to begin my little speech when she exclaimed:

"I knew I was n't mistaken-I told John it was you! John said it probably was n't, but I knew I was right. I said you would recognize me presently and come over; and I'm glad you did, for I should n't have felt much flattered if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me. Sit down, sit down-how odd it is—you are the last person I was ever expecting to see again.”

This was a stupefying surprise. It took my wits clear away, for an instant. However, we shook hands cordially all around, and sat down. But truly this was the tightest place I ever was in. I seemed to vaguely remember the girl's face, now, but I had no idea where I had seen it before, or what name belonged with it. I immediately tried to get up a diversion about Swiss scenery, to keep her from launching into topics that might betray that I did not know her; but it was of no use, she went right along upon matters which interested her more:

"O dear! what a night that was, when the sea washed the forward boats away-do you remember it?"

"Oh! do n't I!" said I-but I did n't. I wished the sea had washed the rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain away-then I could have located this questioner.

"And don't you remember how frightened poor Mary was, and how she cried?”

"Indeed I do!" said I.

back!"

"Dear me, how it all comes

I fervently wished it would come back-but my memory was a blank. The wise way would have been to frankly own

up; but I could not bring myself to do that, after the young girl had praised me so for recognizing her; so I went on, deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue but never getting one. The unrecognizable continued, with

vivacity:

"Do you know, George married Mary after all?" "Why, no!

Did he?"

"Indeed he did. He said he did not believe she was half as much to blame as her father was, and I thought he was right. Did n't you?"

"Of course he was. It was a perfectly plain case. I always said so."

"Why, no you did n't—at least that summer."

"Oh! no, not that summer. No, you are perfectly right about that. It was the following winter that I said it."

'Well, as it turned out, Mary was not in the least to blame it was all her father's fault-at least his and old Darley's."

It was necessary to say something—so I said:

"I always regarded Darley as a troublesome old thing." "So he was; but then they always had a great affection for him, although he had so many eccentricities. You remember that when the weather was the least cold he would try to come into the house."

I was rather afraid to proceed. Evidently Darley was not a man-he must be some other kind of animal-possibly a dog, maybe an elephant. However, tails are common to all animals, so I ventured to say:

"And what a tail he had!"

"One! He had a thousand!"

This was bewildering. I did not quite know what to say, so I only said:

66

Yes, he was pretty well fixed in the matter of tails." "For a negro, and a crazy one at that, I should say he was," said she.

It was getting pretty sultry for me. I said to myself, "Is it possible she is going to stop there, and wait for me to speak? If she does, the conversation is blocked. A negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more or less preparation. As to diving rashly into such a vast subject—”

But here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thought by saying: