Business done.—­Slept.

* * * * *

THE SONG OF THE BACILLUS.

    [Not a week passes without our hearing of a fresh agent to
    destroy the Bacillus.]

  Once I flourished unmolested, now my troubles never cease: 
  Man, investigating monster, will not let me rest in peace. 
  I am ta’en from friends and kindred, from my newly-wedded bride,
  And exposed—­it’s really shameless—­on a microscopic slide. 
  Sure some philbacillic person a Society should start
  For Protection of Bacilli from the Doctor’s baleful art.

  KOCH the evil game first started, and his lymph came squirming in. 
  But, ’twixt you and me, Bacilli did not care a single pin. 
  We went elsewhere in the body, and it only made us roam,
  But it’s hard, you must admit it, to be worried from your home,
  And methinks the hapless patient had much rather we had rest,
  When he finds us wildly rushing up and down his tortured breast.

  Then came BERNHEIM and his dodges; his specific is to flood
  All the circulation freely with injections of goat’s blood,
  That is really rather soothing, and it doesn’t seem to hurt,
  Though they lacerate your feelings with an automatic squirt;
  Time will show if it’s effective, but ’twill be revenge most sweet
  If the patients take to butting every single soul they meet.

  Next fierce LIEBRIECH, quite a savage, has declared that we shall die
  Shattered and exacerbated by attacks of Spanish fly. 
  We should like to ask the patient if he thinks he’ll live at ease,
  With his system impregnated with that vile cantharides? 
  We perchance may fall before it, waging an unequal strife,
  But it’s any odds the patient will be blistered out of life.

  Therefore, O my friends, take heart, and these indignities endure,
  Although every week brings news of an indubitable cure;
  We have lived and flourished freely ever since the world began,
  And our lineage is as ancient surely as is that of man;
  While I’ll venture the prediction, as a wind-up to my song,
  That, despite these dreadful Doctors, we may haply live as long.

* * * * *

BLONDEL UP TO DATE.

(A FRAGMENT FROM A HISTORY OF THE FUTURE.)

And so it happened that the King was taken and imprisoned, no one knew whither.  His followers, saving one, treated the matter very calmly.  The exception, who was supposed to be wanting in his wits (he played on the barrel-organ), determined to do his best to rescue his Royal Master; and an idea occurred to him.  He had noticed that when he performed on his musical instrument those who, perforce, were obliged to listen to him acted strangely.  Some of his audiences had frowned, others had shaken their fists at him, and all had gone quickly away.  Only once had a loiterer stayed behind, smiling a sweet smile, as if he were enjoying the music.  To his regret, BLONDEL subsequently ascertained that the apparently charmed listener was stone deaf.  So he argued that if his music had so great an effect upon the population of his native village it would work marvels in the wide world without.  And thus, with a heart full of hope and courage, he started on his travels.