We callilate to make folks useful here." "Well," says old Bitters, "I expect I can Scale a fair load of wood with e'er a man.' "Wood we don't deal in; but perhaps you'll suit,

Because we buy our brimstone by the foot: Here, take this measurin'-rod, as smooth as sin,

And keep a reckonin' of what loads comes in.

You'll not want business, for we need a lot

To keep the Yankees that you send us hot;

At firin' up they 're barely half as spry As Spaniards or Italians, though they 're dry;

At first we have to let the draught on stronger,

But, heat 'em through, they seem to hold it longer."

"Bitters he took the rod, and pretty

On come the teamster, smart as Davy Crockett,

Jinglin' the red-hot coppers in his pocket, And clost behind, ('t was gold-dust, you 'd ha' sworn,)

A load of sulphur yallower 'n seed-corn; To see it wasted as it is Down There Would make a Friction-Match Co. tear its hair!

"Hold on!" says Bitters, "stop right where you be;

You can't go in athout a pass from me." "All right," says t' other, " only step round smart;

I must be home by noon-time with the cart."

Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat, Then with a scrap of paper on his hat Pretends to cipher. "By the public staff,

That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half."

"There's fourteen foot and over," says the driver,

"Worth twenty dollars, ef it's worth a stiver;

Good fourth-proof brimstone, that 'll make 'em squirm,

I leave it to the Headman of the Firm;
After we masure it, we always lay
Some on to allow for settlin' by the way.
Imp and full-grown, I've carted sulphur
here,

And gi'n fair satisfaction, thirty year."
With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud
That in five minutes they had drawed a
crowd,

And afore long the Boss, who heard the row,

Comes elbowin' in with "What's to pay here now?"

Both parties heard, the measurin'-rod he takes,

And of the load a careful survey makes. "Sence I have bossed the business here," says he,

"No fairer load was ever seen by me." Then, turnin' to the Deacon, "You mean

And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore him;

He would n't soil his conscience with a lie, Though he might get the custom-house thereby.

Here, constable, take Bitters by the queue,
And clap him into furnace ninety-two,
And try this brimstone on him; if he's
bright,

He 'll find the masure honest afore night.
He is n't worth his fuel, and I'll bet
The parish oven has to take him yet!"'

“This is my tale, heard twenty years ago

From Uncle Reuben, as the logs burned low,

Touching the walls and ceiling with that

bloom

That makes a rose's calyx of a room.
I could not give his language, where-

through ran

The gamy flavor of the bookless man
Who shapes a word before the fancy cools,
As lonely Crusoe improvised his tools.

I liked the tale, -'t was like so many told By Rutebeuf and his brother Trouvères bold;

Nor were the hearers much unlike to theirs,

Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as bears.
Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind,
The landlords of the hospitable mind;
Good Warriner of Springfield was the last;
An inn is now a vision of the past;
One yet-surviving host my mind recalls,
You'll find him if you go to Trenton
Falls."

THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY

WHEN wise Minerva still was young

And just the least romantic, Soon after from Jove's head she flung That preternatural antic, 'T is said, to keep from idleness

Or flirting, those twin curses, She spent her leisure, more or less, In writing po, no, verses.

How nice they were! to rhyme with far
A kind star did not tarry;

The metre, too, was regular
As schoolboy's dot and carry;

The many-volumed thunder. Some augurs counted nine, some, ten; Some said 't was war, some, famine, And all, that other-minded men Would get a precious

Proud Pallas sighed, "It will not do; Against the Muse I 've sinned, oh!" And her torn rhymes sent flying through Olympus's back window.

Then, packing up a peplus clean,

She took the shortest path thence,
And opened, with a mind serene,
A Sunday-school in Athens.

The verses? Some in ocean swilled,
Killed every fish that bit to 'em;
Some Galen caught, and, when distilled,
Found morphine the residuum;
But some that rotted on the earth
Sprang up again in copies,
And gave two strong narcotics birth,
Didactic verse and poppies.

This poem appeared in The Atlantic for January, 1868, and Lowell's own criticism on it is frank. He wrote to Mr. Thayer: "You will find some verses of mine in the next Atlantic, the conception of which tickles me but half spoiled (and in verse half is more than whole) in the writing;" and in a similar vein he wrote to Mr. Fields, the editor: "The trouble with The Flying Dutchman is not in what I left out, but in what I could n't get in. Let us be honest with each other, my dear Lorenzo de' Medici, if we can't be with anybody else. The conception of the verses is good; the verses are bad."

DON'T believe in the Flying Dutchman ?
I've known the fellow for years;
My button I've wrenched from his clutch,

man:

I shudder whenever he nears!

And sticks like a burr, till he finds I

Have got just the gauge of his bore.

This postman 'twixt one ghost and ť other,
With last dates that smell of the mould,
I have met him (O man and brother,
Forgive me!) in azure and gold.

In the pulpit I've known of his preaching,
Out of hearing behind the time,
Some statement of Balaam's impeaching,
Giving Eve a due sense of her crime.

I have seen him some poor ancient thrashing

Into something (God save us !) more dry, With the Water of Life itself washing The life out of earth, sea, and sky.

O dread fellow-mortal, get newer

Despatches to carry, or none ! We're as quick as the Greek and the Jew

were

At knowing a loaf from a stone.

Till the couriers of God fail in duty,
We sha'n't ask a mummy for news,
Nor sate the soul's hunger for beauty
With your drawings from casts of a
Muse.

CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE

O DAYS endeared to every Muse,
When nobody had any Views,
Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind
By every breeze was new designed,
Insisted all the world should see
Camels or whales where none there be !
O happy days, when men received
From sire to son what all believed,
And left the other world in bliss,
Too busy with bedevilling this!

Beset by doubts of every breed
In the last bastion of my creed,
With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime,
I watch the storming-party climb,
Panting (their prey in easy reach),
To pour triumphant through the breach
In walls that shed like snowflakes tons
Of missiles from old-fashioned guns,
But crumble 'neath the storm that pours
All day and night from bigger bores.
There, as I hopeless watch and wait
The last life-crushing coil of Fate,
Despair finds solace in the praise
Of those serene dawn-rosy days
Ere microscopes had made us heirs
To large estates of doubts and snares,
By proving that the title-deeds,
Once all-sufficient for men's needs,
Are palimpsests that scarce disguise
The tracings of still earlier lies,
Themselves as surely written o'er
An older fib erased before.

Fly thither? Why, the very air
Is full of hindrance and despair!
Fly thither? But I cannot fly;
My doubts enmesh me if I try,
Each Liliputian, but, combined,
Potent a giant's limbs to bind.
This world and that are growing dark;
A huge interrogation mark,
The Devil's crook episcopal,
Still borne before him since the Fall,
Blackens with its ill-omened sign
The old blue heaven of faith benign.
Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How?
Which? Why?

All ask at once, all wait reply.

Men feel old systems cracking under 'em;
Life saddens to a mere conundrum
Which once Religion solved, but she
Has lost has Science found?

the key.

What was snow-bearded Odin, trow,
The mighty hunter long ago,

Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears

Still when the Northlights shake their

spears?

Science hath answers twain, I've heard;
Choose which you will, nor hope a third;
Whichever box the truth be stowed in,
There 's not a sliver left of Odin.
Either he was a pinchbrowed thing,
With scarcely wit a stone to fling,
A creature both in size and shape
Nearer than we are to the ape,
Who hung sublime with brat and spouse
By tail prehensile from the boughs,
And, happier than his maimed descendants,
The culture-curtailed independents,
Could pluck his cherries with both paws,
And stuff with both his big-boned jaws;
Or else the core his name enveloped
Was from a solar myth developed,
Which, hunted to its primal shoot,
Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root,
Thereby to instant death explaining
The little poetry remaining.

Try it with Zeus, 't is just the same;
The thing evades, we hug a name;
Nay, scarcely that, — perhaps a vapor
Born of some atmospheric caper.
All Lempriere's fables blur together
In cloudy symbols of the weather,
And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas
But to illustrate such hypotheses.
With years enough behind his back,
Lincoln will take the selfsame track,
And prove, hulled fairly to the cob,
A mere vagary of Old Prob.
Give the right man a solar myth,
And he'll confute the sun therewith.

They make things admirably plain,
But one hard question will remain:
If one hypothesis you lose,
Another in its place you choose,
But, your faith gone, O man and brother,
Whose shop shall furnish you another?
One that will wash, I mean, and wear,
And wrap us warmly from despair?
While they are clearing up our puzzles,
And clapping prophylactic muzzles
On the Acteon's hounds that sniff
Our devious track through But and If,
Would they'd explain away the Devil
And other facts that won't keep level,
But rise beneath our feet or fail,
A reeling ship's deck in a gale!
God vanished long ago, iwis,

Our dear and admirable Huxley
Cannot explain to me why ducks lay,
Or, rather, how into their eggs
Blunder potential wings and legs
With will to move them and decide
Whether in air or lymph to glide.
Who gets a hair's-breadth on by showing
That Something Else set all agoing?
Farther and farther back we push
From Moses and his burning bush;
Cry,
"Art Thou there?" Above, be-
low,

All Nature mutters yes and no!
"T is the old answer: we 're agreed
Being from Being must proceed,