“Do you believe him?” said Renan.  “Great Scott! 
Believe?  Believe the blackguard?  Of course not!

“Just walk right in and make yourself at home. 
And if he pecks at you I’ll cut his comb.

“He’s only here because the Devil swore
He wouldn’t have him, for the smile he wore.”

Resting his eyes one moment on that proof
Of saving grace, the Frenchman turned aloof,

And stepping down from cloud to cloud, said he: 
“Thank you, monsieur,—­I’ll see if he’ll have me.”

A CRITIC

    [Apparently the Cleveland Leader is not a good judge of
    poetry.—­The Morning Call.]

That from you, neighbor! to whose vacant lot
  Each rhyming literary knacker scourges
His cart-compelling Pegasus to trot,
  As folly, fame or famine smartly urges?

Admonished by the stimulating goad,
  How gaily, lo! the spavined crow-bait prances—­
Its cart before it—­eager to unload
  The dead-dog sentiments and swill-tub fancies.

Gravely the sweating scavenger pulls out
  The tail-board of his curst imagination,
Shoots all his rascal rubbish, and, no doubt,
  Thanks Fortune for so good a dumping-station.

To improve your property, the vile cascade
  Your thrift invites—­to make a higher level. 
In vain:  with tons of garbage overlaid,
  Your baseless bog sinks slowly to the devil.

“Rubbish may be shot here”—­familiar sign! 
  I seem to see it in your every column. 
You have your wishes, but if I had mine
  ’Twould to your editor mean something solemn.

A QUESTION OF ELIGIBILITY

It was a bruised and battered chap
The victim of some dire mishap,
Who sat upon a rock and spent
His breath in this ungay lament: 

“Some wars—­I’ve frequent heard of such—­
Has beat the everlastin’ Dutch! 
But never fight was fit by man
To equal this which has began
In our (I’m in it, if you please)
Academy of Sciences. 
For there is various gents belong
To it which go persistent wrong,
And loving the debates’ delight
Calls one another names at sight. 
Their disposition, too, accords
With fighting like they all was lords! 
Sech impulses should be withstood: 
’Tis scientific to be good.

“’Twas one of them, one night last week,
Rose up his figure for to speak: 
’Please, Mr. Chair, I’m holding here
A resolution which, I fear,
Some ancient fossils that has bust
Their cases and shook off their dust
To sit as Members here will find
Unpleasant, not to say unkind.’ 
And then he read it every word,
And silence fell on all which heard. 
That resolution, wild and strange,
Proposed a fundamental change,
Which was that idiots no more
Could join us as they had before!