Still, if to Jaalam you go down,
You’ll find two parties in the town, 871
One headed by Benaiah Brown,
  And one by Perez Tinkham;
The first believe the ghosts all through
And vow that they shall never rue
The happy chance by which they knew
That people in Jupiter are blue,
And very fond of Irish stew,
Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo 879
Rapped clearly to a chosen few—­
  Whereas the others think ’em
A trick got up by Doctor Slade
With Deborah the chambermaid
  And that sly cretur Jinny. 
That all the revelations wise,
At which the Brownites made big eyes,
Might have been given by Jared Keyes,
  A natural fool and ninny,
And, last week, didn’t Eliab Snooks
Come back with never better looks, 890
As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks,
  And bright as a new pin, eh? 
Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers
(Though to be mixed in parish stirs
Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs)
That no case to his mind occurs
Where spirits ever did converse,
Save in a kind of guttural Erse,
  (So say the best authorities;)
And that a charge by raps conveyed 900
Should be most scrupulously weighed
  And searched into, before it is
Made public, since it may give pain
That cannot soon be cured again,
And one word may infix a stain
  Which ten cannot gloss over,
Though speaking for his private part,
He is rejoiced with all his heart
  Miss Knott missed not her lover.

FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM

I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam, And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam; But what’s my pedigree to you?  That I will soon unravel; I’ve sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel, And, as a natural consequence, presume I needn’t say, I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p——­ [I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount Clump, Clump, the stairways of the brain with—­’Sir, my small
  account,’
And, after every good we gain—­Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom—­still, As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill, 10 The garcons in our Cafe of Life, by dreaming us forgot—­ Sitting, like Homer’s heroes, full and musing God knows what,—­ Till they say, bowing, S’il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note!] I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day, The Tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world’s highway, Great Caesar in mid-march would stop, if Caesar could not pay; Pilgriming’s dearer than it was:  men cannot travel now Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow;
Nay, as long back as Bess’s time,—­when Walsingham went over
Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover 20
He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land,
He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves