And the receipts which thence might flow,

We could divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, Beside these services of mine, I will throw in a very fine (It would do nicely for a sign) Original Titian's Venus.' Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys,

His Greek might make confusion,
Then just to get a rap from Burke,
To recommend a little work

On Public Elocution.
Meanwhile, the spirits made replies
To all the reverent whats and whys,
Resolving doubts of every size,
And giving seekers grave and wise,
Who came to know their destinies,
A rap-turous reception;
When unbelievers void of grace
Came to investigate the place,
(Creatures of Sadducistic race,
With grovelling intellects and base,)
They could not find the slightest trace
To indicate deception;
Indeed, it is declared by some
That spirits (of this sort) are glum,
Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb,
And (out of self-respect) quite mum
To skeptic natures cold and numb,
Who of this kind of Kingdom Come

Have not a just conception:
True, there were people who demurred
That, though the raps no doubt were heard
Both under them and o'er them,

Yet, somehow, when a search they made,
They found Miss Jenny sore afraid,
Or Jenny's lover, Doctor Slade,
Equally awestruck and dismayed,
Or Deborah, the chambermaid,
Whose terrors not to be gainsaid
In laughs hysteric were displayed,

Was always there before them;
This had its due effect with some
Who straight departed, muttering, Hum!
Transparent hoax! and Gammon!
But these were few: believing souls,
Came, day by day, in larger shoals,
As the ancients to the windy holes
'Neath Delphi's tripod brought their doles,
Or to the shrine of Ammon.

The spirits seemed exceeding tame, Call whom you fancied, and he came; The shades august of eldest fame

You summoned with an awful ease;
As grosser spirits gurgled out
From chair and table with a spout,
In Auerbach's cellar once, to flout
The senses of the rabble rout,
Where'er the gimlet twirled about

Of cunning Mephistopheles,
So did these spirits seem in store,
Behind the wainscot or the door,
Ready to thrill the being's core
Of every enterprising bore

With their astounding glamour;
Whatever ghost one wished to hear,
By strange coincidence, was near
To make the past or future clear

(Sometimes in shocking grammar)
By raps and taps, now there, now here
It seemed as if the spirit queer
Of some departed auctioneer
Were doomed to practise by the year

With the spirit of his hammer: Whate'er you asked was answered, yet One could not very deeply get Into the obliging spirits' debt, Because they used the alphabet In all communications,

And new revealings (though sublime) Rapped out, one letter at a time,

With boggles, hesitations,
Stoppings, beginnings o'er again,
And getting matters into train,
Could hardly overload the brain

With too excessive rations,
Since just to ask if two and two
Really make four? or, How d'ye do?
And get the fit replies thereto
In the tramundane rat-tat-too,

Might ask a whole day's patience.

"T was strange ('mongst other things) to find

In what odd sets the ghosts combined,
Happy forthwith to thump any
Piece of intelligence inspired,
The truth whereof had been inquired

By some one of the company;
For instance, Fielding, Mirabeau,
Orator Henley, Cicero,
Paley, John Ziska, Marivaux,
Melancthon, Robertson, Junot,
Scaliger, Chesterfield, Rousseau,
Hakluyt, Boccaccio, South, De Foe,

Diaz, Josephus, Richard Roe,
Odin, Arminius, Charles le gros,
Tiresias, the late James Crow,
Casabianca, Grose, Prideaux,

Old Grimes, Young Norval, Swift, Brissot,
Main:onides, the Chevalier D'O,
Socrates, Fénelon, Job, Stow,
The inventor of Elixir pro,
Euripides, Spinoza, Poe,

Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo,
Came (as it seemed, somewhat de trop)
With a disembodied Esquimaux,
To say that it was so and so,

With Franklin's expedition;
One testified to ice and snow,
One that the mercury was low,
One that his progress was quite slow,
One that he much desired to go,
One that the cook had frozen his toe,
(Dissented from by Dandolo,
Wordsworth, Cynaegirus, Boileau,
La Hontan, and Sir Thomas Roe,)
One saw twelve white bears in a row,
One saw eleven and a crow,
With other things we could not know
(Of great statistic value, though,)
By our mere mortal vision.

Sometimes the spirits made mistakes,
And seemed to play at ducks and drakes
With bold inquiry's heaviest stakes

In science or in mystery; They knew so little (and that wrong) Yet rapped it out so bold and strong, One would have said the unnumbered throng

Had been Professors of History;
What made it odder was, that those
Who, you would naturally suppose,
Could solve a question, if they chose,
As easily as count their toes,

Were just the ones that blundered;
One day, Ulysses happening down,
A reader of Sir Thomas Browne

Nothing could seem absurder; Poor Colonel Jones they all abused And finally downright accused

The poor old man of murder;

'T was thus; by dreadful raps was shown
Some spirit's longing to make known
A bloody fact, which he alone
Was privy to, (such ghosts more prone
In Earth's affairs to meddle are;)
Who are you? with awe-stricken looks,
All ask: his airy knuckles he crooks,
And raps, "I was Eliab Snooks,
That used to be a pedler;

Some on ye still are on my books!"
Whereat, to inconspicuous nooks;
(More fearing this than common spooks,)
Shrank each indebted meddler;
Further the vengeful ghost declared
That while his earthly life was spared,
About the country he had fared,

A duly licensed follower

Of that much - wandering trade that wins

Slow profit from the sale of tins

And various kinds of hollow-ware;
That Colonel Jones enticed him in,
Pretending that he wanted tin,
There slew him with a rolling-pin,
Hid him in a potato-bin,

And (the same night) him ferried
Across Great Pond to t' other shore,
And there, on land of Widow Moore,
Just where you turn to Larkin's store,
Under a rock him buried;
Some friends (who happened to be by)
He called upon to testify

That what he said was not a lie,

And that he did not stir this Foul matter, out of any spite But from a simple love of right;

Which statements the Nine Worthies, Rabbi Akiba, Charlemagne, Seth, Colley Cibber, General Wayne, Cambyses, Tasso, Tubal-Cain, The owner of a castle in Spain, Jehanghire, and the Widow of Nain, (The friends aforesaid,) made more plain And by loud raps attested;

To the same purport testified

Plato, John Wilkes, and Colonel Pride
Who knew said Snooks before he died,
Had in his wares invested,
Thought him entitled to belief
And freely could concur, in brief,
In everything the rest did.

Eliab this occasion seized,
(Distinctly here the spirit sneezed,)
To say that he should ne'er be eased
Till Jenny married whom she pleased,
Free from all checks and urgin's,
(This spirit dropt his final g's)
And that, unless Knott quickly sees
This done, the spirits to appease,
They would come back his life to tease,
As thick as mites in ancient cheese,
And let his house on an endless lease
To the ghosts (terrific rappers these
And veritable Eumenides)

Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins!

Knott was perplexed and shook his head, He did not wish his child to wed

With a suspected murderer, (For, true or false, the rumor spread,) But as for this roiled life he led, "It would not answer," so he said,

"To have it go no furderer."

At last, scarce knowing what it meant,
Reluctantly he gave consent
That Jenny, since 't was evident
That she would follow her own bent,
Should make her own election;
For that appeared the only way
These frightful noises to allay
Which had already turned him gray
And plunged him in dejection.

Accordingly, this artless maid
Her father's ordinance obeyed,
And, all in whitest crape arrayed,
(Miss Pulsifer the dresses made
And wishes here the fact displayed
That she still carries on the trade,

The third door south from Bagg's Arcade,)
A very faint "I do" essayed

And gave her hand to Hiram Slade,

From which time forth, the ghosts were laid,

And ne'er gave trouble after;
But the Selectmen, be it known,
Dug underneath the aforesaid stone,
Where the poor pedler's corpse was
thrown,

And found thereunder a jaw-bone,
Though, when the crowner sat thereon,
He nothing hatched, except alone

Successive broods of laughter;
It was a frail and dingy thing,
In which a grinder or two did cling,

In color like molasses,

Which surgeons, called from far and wide, Upon the horror to decide,

Having put on their glasses,
Reported thus: "To judge by looks,
These bones, by some queer hooks or
crooks,

May have belonged to Mr. Snooks,
But, as men deepest-read in books
Are perfectly aware, bones,
If buried fifty years or so,
Lose their identity and grow

From human bones to bare bones."

Still, if to Jaalam you go down,
You'll find two parties in the town,
One headed by Benaiah Brown,

And one by Perez Tinkham;
The first believe the ghosts all through
And vow that they shall never rue
The happy chance by which they knew
That people in Jupiter are blue,
And very fond of Irish stew,

Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo Rapped clearly to a chosen few

Whereas the others think 'em A trick got up by Doctor Slade With Deborah the chambermaid And that sly cretur Jinny. That all the revelations wise,

At which the Brownites made big eyes,
Might have been given by Jared Keyes,
A natural fool and ninny,

And, last week, did n't Eliab Snooks
Come back with never better looks,
As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks,
And bright as a new pin, eh?
Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers
(Though to be mixed in parish stirs
Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs)

That no case to his mind occurs
Where spirits ever did converse,
Save in a kind of guttural Erse,

(So say the best authorities;)
And that a charge by raps conveyed
Should be most scrupulously weighed
And searched into, before it is
Made public, since it may give pain
That cannot soon be cured again,
And one word may infix a stain

Which ten cannot gloss over,
Though speaking for his private part,
He is rejoiced with all his heart

Miss Knott missed not her lover.

I AM a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam,

And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam;

But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel;

I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel,

And, as a natural consequence, presume I need n't say,

I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p

[I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount

Clump, Clump, the stairways of the brain with -"Sir, my small account," And, after every good we gain Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom —still, As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill,

The garçons in our Café of Life, by dreaming us forgot

Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,

Till they say, bowing, S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note!]

I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day,

The tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway,

Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop, if
Cæsar could not pay;
Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men
cannot travel now

Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon
simple vow;

a

Nay, as long back as Bess's time, when Walsingham went over

Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover

He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land,

He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the

knaves in hand.

If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win,

Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in?

Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on,

And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison ?

I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true;

'T is out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new:

The question boath for men and meates longe boyages ht beginne

Lhes in a notshell, rather sahe lhes in a case of tinne.

But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages,

With self-sustaining retinues of little giltedged pages,

Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam,

By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home;

And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then,

Our outlay is about as small-just paper, ink, and pen.

Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew; Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view, Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew;

Indeed, 't is wondrous how_each_Age, though laughing at the Past, Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last;

How it is sure its system would break up at once without

The bunion which it will believe hereditary

There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere,

And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth

The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth:

"Well," thus it muses, "well, what odds? "T is not for us to warn;

'T will be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born; Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn?

Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent. received from Treadmill shares,

We might... but these poor devils at last will get our easy-chairs. High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug, Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug;

From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum

Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come;

Young ears hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on, Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone;

Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an
egg was laid!
Cack-cack-cack-cackle! rang around, the
scratch for worms was stayed,
Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! from this egg the com-
ing cock shall stalk!

The great New Era dawns, the age of
Deeds and not of Talk!
And every stupid hen of us hugged close
his egg of chalk,

Thought, sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength, When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot,

But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!" So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful though it be,

I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me,

Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame

Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all coming till they came.

Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers?

Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears; Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut,

Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there - But!

We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go ahead,

With flinging our caught bird away for two i' th' bush instead,

With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare shall be a portal,

And questioning Deeps that never yet have oped their lips to mortal; We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition,

With mediums and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission,

(The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,

'T would seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak.)

Make but the public laugh, be sure 't will take you to be somebody;

"T will wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body; "T is good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why

Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie?

Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop,

And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop?

Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then

Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen? Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff; But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;

No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny,

And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey,

From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a clublick,

So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public.