pretty as these A delicate lady fail to please?  She smoked the pipe with the golden clog, And drank the tea, and ate the dog, And kept the heart,—­and that’s the way The match was made, the gossips say.

        I can’t describe the wedding-day,
        Which fell in the lovely month of May;
        Nor stop to tell of the Honey-moon,
        And how it vanish’d all too soon;
        Alas! that I the truth must speak,
        And say that in the fourteenth week,
        Soon as the wedding guests were gone,
          And their wedding suits began to doff,
        Min-Ne was weeping and “taking-on,”
          For he had been trying to “take her off.” 
        Six wives before he had sent to heaven,
        And being partial to number “seven,”
        He wish’d to add his latest pet,
        Just, perhaps, to make up the set! 
        Mayhap the rascal found a cause
        Of discontent in a certain clause
        In the Emperor’s very liberal laws,
        Which gives, when a Golden Belt is wed,
        Six hundred pounds to furnish the bed;
        And if in turn he marry a score,
        With every wife six hundred more.

        First, he tried to murder Min-Ne
        With a special cup of poison’d tea,
        But the lady smelling a mortal foe,
               Cried, “Ho-Ho! 
        I’m very fond of mild Souchong,
        But you, my love, you make it too strong.”

        At last Ho-Ho, the treacherous man,
        Contrived the most infernal plan
        Invented since the world began;
        He went and got him a savage dog,
        Who’d eat a woman as soon as a frog;
        Kept him a day without any prog,
        Then shut him up in an iron bin,
        Slipp’d the bolt and locked him in;
               Then giving the key
               To poor Min-Ne,
        Said, “Love, there’s something you mustn’t see
        In the chest beneath the orange-tree.”

* * * * *

        Poor mangled Min-Ne! with her latest breath
        She told her father the cause of her death;
        And so it reach’d the Emperor’s ear,
        And his highness said, “It is very clear
        Ho-Ho has committed a murder here!”
        And he doom’d Ho-Ho to end his life
        By the terrible dog that kill’d his wife;
        But in mercy (let his praise be sung!)
        His thirteen brothers were merely hung,
        And his slaves bamboo’d in the mildest way,
        For a calendar month, three times a day. 
        And that’s the way that Justice dealt
        With wicked Ho-Ho of the Golden Belt!

THE HIRED SQUIRREL.

A RUSSIAN FABLE.

BY LAURA SANFORD.

A lion to the Squirrel said: 
“Work faithfully for me,
And when your task is done, my friend,
Rewarded you shall be
With a barrel-full of finest nuts,
Fresh from my own nut-tree.” 
“My Lion King,” the Squirrel said,
“To this I do agree.”