THE RICH TESTATOR.

  He lay on his bed and solemnly “signed,”
    Gasping—­perhaps ’twas a jest he meant: 
  “This of a sound and disposing mind
    Is the last ill-will and contestament.”

  TWO METHODS.

  To bucks and ewes by the Good Shepherd fed
  The Priest delivers masses for the dead,
  And even from estrays outside the fold
  Death for the masses he would not withhold. 
  The Parson, loth alike to free or kill,
  Forsakes the souls already on the grill,
  And, God’s prerogative of mercy shamming,
  Spares living sinners for a harder damning.

  FOUNDATIONS OF THE STATE

  Observe, dear Lord, what lively pranks
  Are played by sentimental cranks! 
  First this one mounts his hinder hoofs
  And brays the chimneys off the roofs;
  Then that one, with exalted voice,
  Expounds the thesis of his choice,
  Our understandings to bombard,
  Till all the window panes are starred! 
  A third augments the vocal shock
  Till steeples to their bases rock,
  Confessing, as they humbly nod,
  They hear and mark the will of God. 
  A fourth in oral thunder vents
  His awful penury of sense
  Till dogs with sympathetic howls,
  And lowing cows, and cackling fowls,
  Hens, geese, and all domestic birds,
  Attest the wisdom of his words. 
  Cranks thus their intellects deflate
  Of theories about the State. 
  This one avers ’tis built on Truth,
  And that on Temperance.  This youth
  Declares that Science bears the pile;
  That graybeard, with a holy smile,
  Says Faith is the supporting stone;
  While women swear that Love alone
  Could so unflinchingly endure
  The heavy load.  And some are sure
  The solemn vow of Christian Wedlock
  Is the indubitable bedrock.

  Physicians once about the bed
  Of one whose life was nearly sped
  Blew up a disputatious breeze
  About the cause of his disease: 
  This, that and t’ other thing they blamed. 
  “Tut, tut!” the dying man exclaimed,
  “What made me ill I do not care;
  You’ve not an ounce of it, I’ll swear. 
  And if you had the skill to make it
  I’d see you hanged before I’d take it!”

  AN IMPOSTER.

  Must you, Carnegie, evermore explain
  Your worth, and all the reasons give again
  Why black and red are similarly white,
  And you and God identically right? 
  Still must our ears without redress submit
  To hear you play the solemn hypocrite
  Walking in spirit some high moral level,
  Raising at once his eye-balls and the devil? 
  Great King of Cant! if Nature had but made
  Your mouth without a tongue I ne’er had prayed
  To have an earless head.  Since she did not,
  Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot—­
  Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air
  So delicately, mercifully rare
  That when the fellow climbs that giddy hill,
  As, for my sins, I know at last he will,
  To utter twaddle in that void inane
  His soundless organ he will play in vain.