But the Deacon swore (as deacons do, With an 'I dew vum,' or an 'I tell yeou') He would build one shay to beat the taown 'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; 30 It should be so built that it could n' break daown:

'Fur,' said the Deacon, ''t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;

'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,

First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 'Huddup!' said the parson. - Off went they.

100

The parson was working his Sunday's text,

CONTENTMENT

'Man wants but little here below.'

LITTLE I ask; my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone
(A very plain brown stone will do)
That I may call my own;-
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.

Plain food is quite enough for me;
Three courses are as good as ten; -
If Nature can subsist on three,

Thank Heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice; My choice would be vanilla-ice.

120

1858.

ΤΟ

I care not much for gold or land;
Give me a mortgage here and there, –
Some good bank-stock, some note of hand,
Or trifling railroad share,

I only ask that Fortune send
A little more than I shall spend.

Honors are silly toys, I know,

And titles are but empty names;
I would, perhaps, be Plenipo,

But only near St. James;
I'm very sure I should not care
To fill our Gubernator's chair.

Jewels are baubles; 't is a sin

To care for such unfruitful things;

20

Busts, cameos, gems, such things as these,

Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please,

And selfish churls deride; One Stradivarius, I confess,

Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 60

PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY

OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR

A MATHEMATICAL STORY

FACTS respecting an old arm-chair,

At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there.

Seems but little the worse for wear.
That's remarkable when I say

It was old in President Holyoke's day.
One of his boys, perhaps you know,
Died, at one hundred, years ago.)
He took lodgings for rain or shine
Under green bed-clothes in '69.

- 10

Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, Standing still, if you must have proof. 'Gambrel? Gambrel ? ' Let me beg You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, First great angle above the hoof, That's the gambrel hence gambrelroof.)

:

Nicest place that ever was seen,—
Colleges red and Common green,
Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 20
Sweetest spot beneath the skies
When the canker-worms don't rise,
When the dust, that sometimes flies
Into your mouth and ears and eyes,
In a quiet slumber lies,

Not in the shape of unbaked pies
Such as barefoot children prize.

A kind of harbor it seems to be,
Facing the flow of a boundless sea.
Rows of gray old Tutors stand
Ranged like rocks above the sand;
Rolling beneath them, soft and green,
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,

One wave, two waves, three waves, four,

Sliding up the sparkling floor:
Then it ebbs to flow no more,

Wandering off from shore to shore

With its freight of golden ore!

Pleasant place for boys to play;—

Better keep your girls away;

Hearts get rolled as pebbles do

Which countless fingering waves pursue, And every classic beach is strown

30

40

With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red

stone.

Smith transferred it to one of the BROWNS,
And took his money, five silver crowns.
Brown delivered it up to MOORE,

Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four.
Moore made over the chair to LEE,
Who gave him crowns of silver three.
Lee conveyed it unto DREW,

And now the payment, of course, was two.
Drew gave up the chair to Dunn, -
All he got, as you see, was one.
Dunn released the chair to HALL,
And got by the bargain no crown at all.

(A. M. in '90 ? I've looked with care
Through the Triennial, — name not there),-
This person, Richards, was offered then
Eightscore pounds, but would have ten; 100
Nine, I think, was the sum he took,
Not quite certain, but see the book.
By and by the wars were still,

But nothing had altered the Parson's will.
The old arm-chair was solid yet,
But saddled with such a monstrous debt!
Things grew quite too bad to bear,
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair!
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight,
And there was the will in black and white,
Plain enough for a child to spell.
What should be done no man could tell,
For the chair was a kind of nightmare

curse,

And every season but made it worse.

About those conditions?' Well, now you go

140

And do as I tell you, and then you'll know.
Once a year, on Commencement day,
If you'll only take the pains to stay,
You'll see the President in the CHAIR,
Likewise the Governor sitting there.
The President rises; both old and young
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue,
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear,
Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair?
And then his Excellency bows,

As much as to say that he allows.
The Vice-Gub. next is called by name;
He bows like t'other, which means the

1 For nearly forty years, from 1851 to 1889, Holmes never failed to bring a poem to the annual reunion of his college class. These poems, merely occasional,' and local as they were in origin, form a section in his collected works which is perhaps the most important, and, except for his best humorous narratives and his two finest lyrics, the most likely to survive; for, with all Holmes's characteristic wit and humor, they cele brate feelings that are broadly and typically American class loyalty and college loyalty, and growing out of these, the loyalty of man's enduring friendship, and loyalty to country.

The famous class of '29' counted among its members a chief-justice of Massachusetts, George T. Bigelow (the Judge' of this poem); a justice of the United