Seeing a goat the other day kneeling in order to graze with less trouble, it seemed to me a type of the common notion of prayer.  Most people are ready enough to go down on their knees for material blessings, but how few for those spiritual gifts which alone are an answer to our orisons, if we but knew it!

Some people, nowadays, seem to have hit upon a new moralization of the moth and the candle.  They would lock up the light of Truth, lest poor Psyche should put it out in her effort to draw nigh, to it.

No.  X

MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

DEAR SIR,—­Your letter come to han’
  Requestin’ me to please be funny;
But I ain’t made upon a plan
  Thet knows wut’s comin’, gall or honey: 
Ther’ ’s times the world does look so queer,
  Odd fancies come afore I call ’em;
An’ then agin, for half a year,
  No preacher ’thout a call’s more solemn.

You’re ‘n want o’ sunthin’ light an’ cute,
  Rattlin’ an’ shrewd an’ kin’ o’ jingleish, 10
An’ wish, pervidin’ it ’ould suit,
  I’d take an’ citify my English. 
I ken write long-tailed, ef I please,—­
  But when I’m jokin’, no, I thankee;
Then, fore I know it, my idees
  Run helter-skelter into Yankee.

Sence I begun to scribble rhyme,
  I tell ye wut, I hain’t ben foolin’;
The parson’s books, life, death, an’ time
  Hev took some trouble with my schoolin’; 20
Nor th’ airth don’t git put out with me,
  Thet love her ’z though she wuz a woman;
Why, th’ ain’t a bird upon the tree
  But half forgives my bein’ human.

An’ yit I love th’ unhighschooled way
  Ol’ farmers hed when I wuz younger;
Their talk wuz meatier, an’ ’ould stay,
  While book-froth seems to whet your hunger;
For puttin’ in a downright lick
  ‘twixt Humbug’s eyes, ther’ ’s few can metch it, 30
An’ then it helves my thoughts ez slick
  Ez stret-grained hickory does a hetchet.

But when I can’t, I can’t, thet’s all,
  For Natur’ won’t put up with gullin’;
Idees you hev to shove an’ haul
  Like a druv pig ain’t wuth a mullein: 
Live thoughts ain’t sent for; thru all rifts
  O’ sense they pour an’ resh ye onwards,
Like rivers when south-lyin’ drifts
  Feel thet th’ old arth’s a-wheelin’ sunwards. 40

Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin’ thick
  Ez office-seekers arter ’lection,
An’ into ary place ’ould stick
  Without no bother nor objection;
But sence the war my thoughts hang back
  Ez though I wanted to enlist ’em,
An’ subs’tutes,—­they don’t never lack,
  But then they’ll slope afore you’ve mist ’em.

Nothin’ don’t seem like wut it wuz;
  I can’t see wut there is to hender, 50
An’ yit my brains jes’ go buzz, buzz,
  Like bumblebees agin a winder;
’fore these times come, in all airth’s row,
  Ther’ wuz one quiet place, my head in,
Where I could hide an’ think,—­but now
  It’s all one teeter, hopin’, dreadin’.