The monster’s salient points to sum,
    His heavy breath was portery;
  His glowing nose suggested rum;
    His eyes were gin-and-wortery.

  His dress was torn—­for dregs of ale
    And slops of gin had rusted it;
  His pimpled face was wan and pale,
    Where filth had not encrusted it.

  “Come, Polter,” said the fiend, “begin,
    And keep the bowl a-flowing on—­
  A working-man needs pints of gin
    To keep his clockwork going on.”

  Bob shuddered:  “Ah, you’ve made a miss,
    If you take me for one of you—­
  You filthy beast, get out of this—­
    Bob Polter don’t want none of you.”

  The demon gave a drunken shriek
    And crept away in stealthiness,
  And lo, instead, a person sleek
    Who seemed to burst with healthiness.

  “In me, as your advisor hints,
    Of Abstinence you have got a type—­
  Of Mr. Tweedle’s pretty prints
    I am the happy prototype.

  “If you abjure the social toast,
    And pipes, and such frivolities,
  You possibly some day may boast
    My prepossessing qualities!”

  Bob rubbed his eyes, and made ’em blink,
    “You almost make me tremble, you! 
  If I abjure fermented drink,
    Shall I, indeed, resemble you?

  “And will my whiskers curl so tight? 
    My cheeks grow smug and muttony? 
  My face become so red and white? 
    My coat so blue and buttony?

  “Will trousers, such as yours, array
    Extremities inferior? 
  Will chubbiness assert its sway
    All over my exterior?

  “In this, my unenlightened state,
    To work in heavy boots I comes,
  Will pumps henceforward decorate
    My tiddle toddle tootsicums?

  “And shall I get so plump and fresh,
    And look no longer seedily? 
  My skin will henceforth fit my flesh
    So tightly and so Tweedie-ly?”

  The phantom said, “You’ll have all this,
    You’ll know no kind of huffiness,
  Your life will be one chubby bliss,
    One long unruffled puffiness!”

  “Be off!” said irritated Bob. 
     “Why come you here to bother one? 
  You pharisaical old snob,
    You’re wuss almost than t’other one!

  “I takes my pipe—­I takes my pot,
    And drunk I’m never seen to be: 
  I’m no teetotaller or sot,
    And as I am I mean to be!”

[Illustration]

GENTLE ALICE BROWN.

  It was a robber’s daughter, and her name was Alice Brown;
  Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;
  Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing;
  But it isn’t of her parents that I’m going for to sing.

  As Alice was a-sitting at her window-sill one day,
  A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;
  She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,
  That she thought, “I could be happy with a gentleman like you!”