Judge of our poet’s chagrin, however, when, on arriving at TAFFY’S house, he was informed, with mocking smiles.

     “TAFFY wasn’t at home.”

Here was a fall to his well-formed plans of vengeance.—­All dashed to the ground by one foul scathing blow.

But whither went TAFFY?  The poet himself could tell you if you waited, but we will tell you now.  TAFFY liked beef; liked it as no other human liked it, for he could eat it raw.  And when, foraging around the village, he found a nice piece at the poet’s house, his carnivorous proclivities induced him to steal it, and, with it under his arm, hurried off to the nearest barn, and there rapidly devoured it.  This only seemed to give him an appetite.  He went foraging again, but this time only picked up a mutton-bone.  “The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat,” cried TAFFY, and with a flourish he hastened to his hiding place, while the poor poet, disconsolate in his first loss, returned home only to find a second; and the culprit was still free.

Ah! my kind reader, here was a deep cut to our poet.  “Who would care for mother now?” he sang, for all the meat was gone.  Home was no longer the dearest spot on earth to him, since it was rudely desecrated by the hands of TAFFY—­of DAVID, the Welshman.

Poor poet!  Cruel TAFFY!

Let me draw the curtain of popular sympathy over the unhappy household.  The poet has told his story in words which will never die; and he has proclaimed the infamy of TAFFY to the uttermost corners of the earth.

* * * * *

Sweeping Reform.

The world moves.  There is a chiropodist now travelling in the East who removes excrescences of the feet simply by sweeping them away with a corn broom.  When last heard of he was at Alexandria, and there is no corn in Egypt, now.

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OUR EXPLOSIVES.

What between nitroglycerine, kerosene, and ordinary gas, New York city has, for years.past, been admirably provided with explosives.  Now we have to add gasoline to the interesting catalogue of inflammables.  What gasoline is, we have not the slightest notion, but, as it knocked several houses in Maiden Lane into ashes a few days since, it must be something.  Crinoline, dangerous as it is, would have been safer for Maiden Lane than gasoline, and more appropriate.  In the present dearth of public amusements, these jolly explosives—­gasoline, dualine, nitroglycerine, and the rest of ’em,—­come in very well to create a sensation.  They keep the firemen in wind, and, as the firemen keep them in water, the obligation is reciprocal.  Let Gasoline, as well as Crinoline, have the suffrage, by all means.

* * * * *

Aggravating.

The war news is becoming dizzier every day.  It is now announced that the
Prussian headquarters are at St. Dizier.

* * * * *