DEAR SIR,—­Why would it be a mistake to say that a Negro was “as black as my hat?” Because I never wear one. The only inconvenience resulting is in wet weather—­but, even then, I am prepared for all emergencies.  I keep in my pocket a little square of black waterproof, to cover my head when it rains.  In an Assize town, the other day, I was followed by an angry crowd, who imagined that I was one of the Judges, and that I had gone mad, and was walking about the streets with the black cap on!  But all true reformers are treated in this way, even in England, the land of Liberty.

Yours, HATZOFF.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE JERRY-BUILDING JABBERWOCK.]

  “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 
    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”—­
  Ah, CARROLL! it is not in fun
    Your song’s light lilt we snatch.

  Our Jabberwock’s a real brute,
    With mighty maw, and ruthless hand,
  Who ravage makes beyond compute
    In Civic Blunderland.

  Look at the ogre’s hideous mouth! 
    His tiger-teeth, his dragon-tail! 
  O’er Town, East, West, and North and South,
    He leaves his slimy trail.

  And where he comes all Beauty dies,
    And where he halts all Greenery fades. 
  Pleasantness flies where’er he plies
    His gruesomest of trades.

  He blights the field, he blasts the wood,
    With breath as fierce as prairie flame;
  And where sweet works of Nature stood,
    He leaves us—­slums of shame.

  The locust and the canker-worm
    Are not more ruinous than he. 
  “I’ll take this Eden—­for a term!”
    He cries, and howls with glee.

  “Beauty?  Mere bosh!  Charm?  Utter rot! 
    What boots your ‘Earthly Paradise,’
  Until ’tis made ‘A Building Plot’? 
    Then it indeed looks nice!

  “O Jerry Street!  O Jerry Park! 
    O Jerry Gardens, Jerry Square!—­
  You won’t discover—­what a lark!—­
    One ‘touch of Nature’ there!

  “‘This handsome Villa Residence’
    Means mud-built walls and clay-clogged walks;
  And drains offensive to the sense,
    And swamps whence fever stalks.

  “Beauty’s best friends I drive away,
    Artists who sketch, ramblers who rove,
  Lovers who spoon, children who play,—­
    All, all who Nature love.

  “Nor do I give them wholesome homes
    For verdant meads—­no, there’s the fun! 
  Stuccodom, frail and sickly, comes
    After ‘Lot Twenty-One!’

  “I make a clearing, dig a trench,
    Run up a shell of rotten bricks. 
  And thus the rule of sham and stench
    Upon the ‘site’ I fix.

  “The ugly and unhealthy still
    Associate with the name of Jerry;
  And thus I work my wicked will,
    And flourish, and make merry!”

  ’Twas so the Jerry-Jabberwock
    Sang in a suburb, void of shame,
  Blunderland’s civic will to mock,
    And put its sense to shame.