The waves emergent from her eyes
    Set symphonies afloat,
  These undulations simply struck
    His fundamental note.

  No longer could he hide his love,
    Nor cultures could he make,
  And so he screwed his courage up,
    And thus to her he spake: 

  “Oh, maid of undulations sweet,
    Inoculate my veins,
  And fill my thirsty arteries up
    With amorous ptomaines.

  “In vain I try to break this thrall,
    In vain my reason fights,
  My inner self tempestuous teems
    With microcosmic mites.

  “I cannot offer you a crown
    Of gold—­I cannot tell
  Of terrapin or wine for us,
    But rations balanced well.

  “A little fat just now and then,
    Some carbohydrates sweet,
  And gluten in the bakers’ bread,
    Are what we’ll have to eat.

  “The days will pass in rapture by,
    With antitoxine frills,
  And on our Guinea-pigs we’ll try
    The cures for all our ills.

  “O! maiden fair, wilt thou be mine? 
    Come, give me but one kiss,
  And dwell forever blessed with me. 
    In symbiotic bliss.”

  This maiden, modest, up-to-date,
    Eschewed domestic strife;
  In mocking accents she replied,
    “Wat t’ell—­not on your life.”

The philosopher and the theologian pretend to understand the origin of things and the foundation of ethics, but what one of them ever had the least idea of how love first started?  What one of them can tell you a thing concerning the original osculation—­that primary amatory congress which was the beginning of the beginning?—­

  Bathed in Bathybian bliss
    And sunk in the slush of the sea,
  Thrilled the first molecular kiss,
    The beginning of you and of me.

  The Atom of Oxygen blushed
    When it felt fair Hydrogen’s breath,
  The Atom of Nitrogen rushed
    Eager to Life out of Death.

  Through Ocean’s murmuring dell
    Ran a whisper of rapture Elysian;
  Across that Bathybian jell
    Ran a crack that whispered of fission.

  Alas! that such things should be,
    That cruel unkind separation,
  Adown in the depths of the sea
    Should follow the first osculation.

  O tender lover and miss,
    You cannot remember too well
  That the first molecular kiss
    Was the first Bathybian sell.

Not only are women rapidly invading the domain of chemistry, but they are also the yellow peril of her sister science, pharmacy.  A drug-store without a dimpled damsel is now a fit subject for the sheriff’s hammer.—­

  There in the corner pharmacy,
    This lithesome lady lingers,
  And potent pills and philters true
    Are fashioned by her fingers.

  Her phiz behind the soda fount
    May oft be seen in summer;
  How sweetly foams the soda fizz,
    When you receive it from her.