He did well understand;

But he smiled, as he stood at the table,
With a smile that was artfully bland.

How he trifled with sense,
You would scarcely believe;
And with cunning intense,
Fancy statements did weave:

Whilst he kept back his facts by the dozen,
And the same, with intent to deceive.

Yes, the tricks that were play'd

By that Hebrew, Ben D--,
And the points that he made

Were quite shocking to me;

Till at last he sat down amid laughter,
And chuckling himself, I could see.

Then up sprang Ar-Gyle,

With his hair flowing free,

And he gave a wild snort,

And said, "Shall this be?

We are humbugged by Asian myst'ries,

And he went for that Hebrew, Ben D—-—.

Which the war-dance he had

Was exciting to watch,

Though I feared, lest too mad,

His job he might botch,

For he whooped, and he raved, and he ranted ;-

You see he's so pepp'ry and Scotch.

Still, the scene that ensued

Was uncommonly grand,
For the floor it was strewed,
Like the leaves on the strand,
With the facts that Ben D-

had been hiding,

The facts "He did well understand."

"How fares my boy,―my soldier boy, Of the Old Ninth Army Corps?

I warrant he bore him gallantly

In the smoke and the battle's roar !"

"I know him not," said the aged man, "And, as I remarked before,

I was with Grant-" "Nay, nay, I know," Said the farmer, "Say no more;

"He fell in battle,-I see alas !

"Thou 'ast smooth these tidings o'er,Nay speak the truth, whatever it be, Though it rend my bosom's core.

"How fell he,—with his face to the foe,
Upholding the flag he bore?

O, say not that my boy disgraced
The uniform that he wore!"

"I cannot tell," said the aged man,
"And should have remarked, before,
That I was with Grant,-in Illinois,-
Some three years before the war."

Then the farmer spake him never a word,
But beat with his fist full sore

That aged man, who had worked for Grant
Some three years before the war.

BRET HARIE,

The following parody appeared in Fon Duan, one of Beeton's Christmas Annuals. The original poem refers to General Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States; the parody is in allusion to Mr. Albert Grant, M.P, who presented Leicester Square to the public in July, 1874, and whose name was then prominently before the public in connection with numerous financial schemes -

"I WAS WITH GRANT."

"I WAS with Grant--" the stranger said;
Said McDougal, "Say no more,

But come you in-I have much to ask-
And please to shut the door."

"I was with Grant- " the stranger said;
Said McDougal, "Nay, no more,—
You have seen him sit at the Emma Board?
Come, draw on your mem'ry's store.

"What said my Albert-my Baron brave,
Of the great financing corps?

I warrant he bore him scurvily
'Midst the interruption's roar !"

"No doubt he did," said the stranger then;
"But, as I remarked before,

I was with Grant——” "Nay, nay, I know,"
Said McDougal; "but tell me more."

"He's presented another square !—I see,
You'd smooth the tidings o'er--
Or started, perchance, more Water-works
On the Mediterranean shore?
"Or made the Credit Foncier pay,
Or floated a mine with ore?
Oh, tell me not he is pass'd away
From his home in Kensington Gore !"

Charley Peaces abound

In the subbubs to-day;

And they're apt, when they're found,
To go blazing away

At a constable all unpertected, which the same

has the worst of the fray.

Can you tap a cove's head

If you're progress is checked

By the neat bit o' lead

That a Colt does eject?

And when bullets is lodged in your stummick, can

you tootle with proper effect?

That you can't, I submit,

And the truth must be faced

That the Force will get hit,

And the town be cisgraced,

Till each Bobby with Billy-that's Sikes, sir-on a

more equal footing is placed.

Are these shootings a dream?

(I'm sarcastic, no doubt.) Are things what they seem? Or is visions about?

Is our wonderful whistle a failure, and are rattle

and truncheon played out?

Funny Folks, August 2, 1884.

Scribners' Monthly for May, 1881, contained a humorous collection of imitations of various authors, entitled "Home, Sweet Home, with Variations." It commences by giving a couple of verses from the original poem by John Howard Payne; next comes a variation such as might have been written by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Walt Whitman, Austin Dobson, Oliver Goldsmith, and Alexander Pope are also supposed each to contribute a new setting of the old song, the imitation of Walt Whitman is

exquisitely humorous; but that which principally concerns us here is the third imitation, which is entitled :

HOME, SWEET HOME

as Mr. Francis Bret Harte might have woven it into a touching tale of a western gentleman in a red shirt

BROWN, o' San Juan,

Stranger, I'm Brown.

Come up this mornin' from 'Frisco

Ben a-saltin' my specie-stacks down.

Ben a-knockin' around,

Fer a man from San Juan,

Putty considable frequent―

Jes' catch onter that streak o' the dawn!

Right thar lies my home

Right thar in the red

I could slop over, stranger, in po'try

Would spread out old Shakspoke cold dead.

Stranger, you freeze to this: there aint no kinder gin

palace,

Nor no variety-show lays over a man's own ranche.
Maybe it hain't no style, but the Queen in the Tower o'
London

Aint got naathin' I'd swop for that house over thar on the hill-side.

Thar is my ole gal, 'n' the kids, 'n' the rest o' my live-stock; Thar my Remington hargs, and thar there's a griddle-cake br'ilin'

Fer the two of us, pard-and thar, I allow, the heavens
Smile more friendly-like than on any other locality.
Stranger, nowhere else I don't take no satisfaction.
Gimme my ranch, 'n' them friendly old Shanghai chickens-
I brung the original pair f'm the States in eighteen-'n'-fifty-
Gimme them, and the feelin' of solid domestic comfort.

Yer parding, young man

But this landscape a kind

Er flickers-I 'low 'twuz the po'try

I thought thet my eyes hed gone blind.

*

Take that pop from my belt!

Hi, thar-gimme yer han'

Or I'll kill myself- Lizzie! she's left me-
Gone off with a purtier man!
Thar, I'll quit--the ole gal

An' the kids! run away!

I be derned! Howsomever, come in, pard― The griddle-cake's thar, anyway.

To "AULD WILLIE."

(After Bret Harte's "The Return of Belisarius.")

So again you've been at it, old fellow,
The old game of four years ago;
You've given the Tories a drubbing;
You've had, so it seems, quite a go.
By Jove! and you were down upon them,
Denouncing, and all that, you know;
But what about Egypt, old fellow,

And those vows of yours four years ago?
Ah! it's far, far from jolly, old fellow,
To think it is four years ago,
And scarcely a measure effected,

Attempted, and all that, you know!

You denounce Lords and Tories with vigour;
But for all your palaver, I trow,
Matters are about much of a muchness
To-day, they were four years ago!

The Weekly Dispatch, September 14, 1884.
(Parody Competition).

AVONICUS.

Bret Harte's prose writings have been frequently parodied, and several examples will be given when the subject of prose parodies is reached. One of the best of these occurs on page 156 of The Shotover Papers for November, 1874; it is entitled "His Finger."

Nought to be heard, save the solemn "click, click,"

And the Editor's foot on the stair.

One o'clock two o'clock chimed !

"Proofs," coming up again, "read ;”

Three o'clock four o'clock ! daylight is here;

Trudge away homeward to bed.

Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the man far away in the rear,
But I'm forced to hold my nose,

For I must with such odours near.
Oh! but for one short hour
An appetite good to feel!

I formerly used my dinner to want,
But a walk now costs a meal.

With boots all dirty and worn,

And trousers heavy with mud,
A Londoner trudged on a market-day
With a footfall's dreary thud.

Splash, splash, splash!

While garbage may spatter and spirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitchWould that its cry could reach the rich

He sang "The Song of the Dirt."

Punch, August 23, 1884.

THE SONG OF THE DIRT.

ANONYMOUS.

I REMEMBER, I remember,

The house--'twas Clunn's Hotel, The friends who knocked me up at eight, I recollect as well;

They never came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

For liquor flowed from when they came Till when they went away.

I remember, I remember,

The "brandies "-large and smallThe Chablis and the Veuve Clicquot, The sodas split by all;

The caraffe at my bedside set,
With cognac well filled up-
And what a time it took to mix
The primal champagne cup.

(Here five verses are omitted).

I remember, I remember,

Last and fresh this memory comes,--
They brought hot pickle sandwiches,
Which filled my bed with crumbs ;
It was a heated taste I own;
But brandy's apt to cloy,
Unless you pick your palate up
With devilled eggs and soy.

THOMAS HOOD.

WHAT IT MAY COME TO.

I REMEMBER, I remember,

The House where I was bred;

The Woolsack, whence the CHANCELLOR

That annual Message read.

He never came till after four,

And rarely stayed till five;

For, if their dinners were delayed,

Could Senators survive?

I remember, I remember,

The Marquises and Earls,

The peerless rows of Peeresses,
Those flowers decked in pearls.

The cross-bench, where the Princes sat;

And where the Prelates shone

In piety and lawn arrayed

The Bishops now are gone!

I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to spout,

And thought the papers must be mad
To leave my speeches out.

My eloquence was practised then,
That now is left to rust;

And Statesmen oft, I'm sure, have winced
Before my boyish thrust!

I remember, I remember,

The Commons trooping in ;

I used to think that in a fight
The Peers must always win.
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm kicked out of the House
I sat in when a boy!

Punch, September 6, 1884.

An imitation of Hood's Dream of Eugene Aram was published in Truth, February 22, 1877. Its twenty-six verses were descriptive of the sorrows of a poor orphan girl on leaving the Wanstead Home to go into service :

'TIS in the prime of summer-time,
A sunny morn in May,

And scores of merry maidens cease
A moment from their play;

For from their Happy Wanstead Home,
A girl is going that day.

A still more melancholy poem, in imitation of the same original, appeared in Truth, July 19, 1877. This was entitled The Blue-coat Boy's Ghost, and described, in twenty-seven verses, the horrible manner in which a poor lad, named Arthur Gibbes, had been killed in Christ's Hospital. A public investigation was held, and the result showed that a brutal system of fagging was in full force in the school, and that scarcely any supervision was exercised over the elder boys.

"Meeting in the Boudoir; or, a Song of the Follies of Fashion," which appeared in Truth, June 24, 1880, was a long parody of Hood's Song of the Shirt, in fourteen verses.

"The Lost Child, or Russell's lament on the loss of his Reform Bill," a long, political parody of Hood's Lost Child, appeared in Punch, February 16, 1867.

6

"Oh ! don't you go up such a shocking night.
Come sleep on my lap," said a maiden bright.
On his Roman nose a tear-drop come,
But still he remarked, as he upward clomb,
Higher!

"Look out for the branch of that sycamore-tree!
Dodge rollin' stones, if any you see!"
Sayin' which the farmer went home to bed,
And the singular voice replied overhead,
Higher!

About quarter-past six the next afternoon,
A man accidentally goin' up soon
Heard spoken above him as often as twice,
The very same word in a very weak voice,

DIOGENES!

THE carriages were filling fast,
When o'er a railway platform pass'd
A youth who bore, with tread precise,
A paper with this bold device,
DIOGENES!

His arm a parcel held beneath;
He drew a number from its sheath,
And shouted, with well-practised lung,
Accents that through the station rung,
DIOGENES !

In happy hours he saw the light,—
The Cynic's lantern glowing bright;
Resolved to make its lustre known,
His lips soon gave the welcome tone,
DIOGENES!

"One hither pass," an old man said, (Life's tempests snow'd his aged head ;) He oped his mouth with laughter wide, While still the clamorous vendor cried, DIOGENES!

"Oh stay!" a maiden cried; the rest Around her were as much impress'd; Each looking forth with eager eye, Urging the vendor to supply!

DIOGENES!