11.  The kettle had had the last of its solo performances.  It persevered with undiminished ardor; but the cricket took first fiddle, and kept it.  Good heaven, how it chirped!  Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star.

12.  There was an indescribable little thrill and tremble in it, at its loudest, which suggested its being carried off its legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense enthusiasm.  Yet they went very well together, the cricket and the kettle.  The burden of the song was still the same; and louder, louder, louder still they sang it in their emulation.

13.  There was all the excitement of a race about it.  Chirp, chirp, chirp! cricket a mile ahead.  Hum, hum, hum—­m—­m! kettle making play in the distance, like a great top.  Chirp, chirp, chirp! cricket round the corner.  Hum, hum, hum-m-m! kettle sticking to him in his own way; no idea of giving in.  Chirp, chirp, chirp, cricket fresher than ever.  Hum, hum, hum-m-m! kettle slow and steady.  Chirp, chirp, chirp! cricket going in to finish him.  Hum, hum, hum-m-m! kettle not to be finished.

14.  Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-scurry, helter-skelter of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the cricket hummed, or the cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with certainty.

15.  Of this there is no doubt; that the kettle and the cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent each his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane.  And this light, bursting on a certain person, who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him literally in a twinkling, and cried, “Welcome home, old fellow! welcome home, my boy!”

This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was taken off the fire.

Charles Dickens.

The pied piper of Hamelin.

I.

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,
    By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
    But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
    From vermin was a pity.

II.

    Rats! 
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
    And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
    And licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats,
    By drowning their speaking
    With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.