OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; | And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide

At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, — Found in the pit when the tanner died.

Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! That was the way he “put her through." - - What do you think the parson found, “ There !' said the Deacon, “naow she'lldew !" When he got up and stared around ?

The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, Do! I tell you, I rather guess

As if it had been to the mill and ground ! She was a wonder, and nothing less !

You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,

How it went to pieces all at once, Deacon and deaconess dropped away,

All at once, and nothing first, — Children and grandchildren, -- where were they? just as bubbles do when thev

| Just as bubbles do when they burst. But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day !

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.

Logic is logic. That's all I say.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED ; - it came and found
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten ;-
“Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came ;-

RAILROAD RHYME.
Running as usual ; much the same.

SINGING through the forests, Thirty and forty at last arrive,

Rattling over ridges ; And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Shooting under arches, Little of all we value here

Rumbling over bridges ; Wakes on the mom of its hundredth year

Whizzing through the mountains, Without both feeling and looking queer.

Buzzing o'er the vale, In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,

Bless me! this is pleasant, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

Riding on the rail ! (This is a moral that runs at large ; Take it. — You 're welcome. — No extra charge.)

Men of different “stations"

In the eye of fame, FIRST OF NOVEMBER, — the Earthquake-day. - 1

Here are very quickly There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,

Coming to the same ; A general flavor of mild decay,

High and lowly people, But nothing local as one may say.

Birds of every feather, There could n't be, — for the Deacon's art

On a common level,
Had made it so like in every part

Travelling together.
That there was n't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,

Gentleman in shorts,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,

Looming very tall ; And the panels just as strong as the floor,

Gentleman at large, And the whippletree neither less nor more,

Talking very small; And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,

Gentleman in tights, And spring and axle and hub encore.

With a loose-ish mien ; And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt

Gentleman in gray, In another hour it will be worn out !

Looking rather green ; First of November, 'Fifty-five !

Gentleman quite old, This morning the parson takes a drive.

Asking for the news ; Now, small boys, get out of the way!

Gentleman in black, Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,

In a fit of blues ; Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.

Gentleman in claret, *Huddup!" said the parson. -- Off went they.

Sober as a vicar; The parson was working his Sunday's text,

Gentleman in tweed,
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed

Dreadfully in liquor !
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,

Stranger on the right
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.

Looking very sunny, - First a shiver, and then a thrill,

Obviously reading Then something decidedly like a spill,

Something rather funny.

1

A dozen men sat on his corpse,

To find out why he died,
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads,
With a stake in his inside.

THOMAS HOOD.

But, 0, lack-a-day!

How time slips away !-
Who'd have thought that while Cupid was play.

ing these tricks
Ten years had elapsed, and — I'd turned twenty-

six ?

“I care not a whit, A LEGEND OF A SHIRT.

He's not grown a bit," I sing of a Shirt that never was new !

Says my Aunt ; “it will still be a very good fit.” In the course of the year Eighteen hundred and two

So Janet and She,
· Aunt Fanny began,

Now about thirty-three,
Upon Grandmamma's plan,

(The maid had been jilted by Mr. Magee,)
To make one for me, then her “dear little man. Each taking one end of “the Shirt " on her knee,
At the epoch I speak about, I was between Again began working with hearty good-will,
A man and a boy,

"Felling the Seams," and “whipping the Frill,"– A hobble-de-hoy,

For, twenty years since, though the Rufile had A fat, little, punchy concern of sixteen,

vanished, Just beginning to flirt

A Frill like a fan had by no means been banished; And ogle, --- so pert,

People wore them at playhouses, parties, and I'd been whipt every day had I had my desert, —

churches, And Aunt Fan volunteered to make me a shirt! Like overgrown fins of overgrown perches. I've said she began it, –

Now, then, by these two thus laying their caps Some unlucky planet

Together, my“Shirt” had been finished, perhaps, No doubt interfered, — for, before she and Janet But for one of those queer little three-cornered Completed the “cutting-out,” “ hemming," and

straps, “stitching,"

Which the ladies call “ Side-bits,” that sever A tall Irish footman appeared in the kitchen;

the “Flaps”;
This took off the maid,

Here unlucky Janet
And I'm sadly afraid

Took her needle, and ran it
My respected Aunt Fanny's attention, too, strayed; Right into her thumb, and cried loudly, " Ads
For, about the same period, a gay son of Mars,

cuss it! Cornet Jones of the Tenth (then the Prince's) I've spoiled myself now by that'ere nasty Gusset!"

Hussars,
With his fine dark eyelashes,

For a month to come
And finer mustaches,

Poor dear Janet's thumb And the ostrich plume worked on the corps' Was in that sort of state vulgar people call “Rum." sabre-taches,

At the end of that time, She had even resolved to say "Yes" should he

A youth, still in his prime, ask it,

The Doctor's fat Errand-boy — just such a dolt And I - and my Shirt - were both left in the basket.

Kept to mix draughts, and spread plasters and

poultices, To her grief and dismay

Who a bread-cataplasm each morning had carried She discovered one day

her Cornet Jones of the Tenth was a little too gay; Sighed, - ogled, — proposed,

- was accepted, For, besides that she saw him — he could not

and married her! say mayWink at one of the actresses capering away

Ten years, or nigh, In a Spanish bolero, one night at the play,

Had again gone by,
She found he'd already a wife at Cambray ; When Fan, accidentally casting her eye
One at Paris, – a nymph of the corps de ballet ; On a dirty old work-basket, hung up on high
And a third down in Kent, at a place called Foot's In the store-closet where herbs were put by to dry,
Cray.

Took it down to explore it, — she didn't know why.
He was “viler than dirt !"
Fanny vowed to exert

Within, a pea-soup-colored fragment she spied, All her powers to forget him, - and finish my Of the hue of a November fog in Cheapside, Shirt.

Or a bad piece of gingerbread spoilt in the baking.

as is