;
There may be millions in it, and there may not; none will know
Until he gets to bedrock or till bedrock comes to him--
For Arthur takes it easy and is strictly in the swim.

It is true, behind his cabin he has sunk a mighty shaft
(When the husky miners saw it they turned aside and laughed);
But Biggs enjoys his bacon, and smokes his pipe and sings,
Content to be enrolled among the great Bonanza Kings.

'Tis full three miles from Dawson town to Biggs' little claim;
The miners' curses on the trail would make you blush with shame
The while they slip, or stub their toes against the roots, or sink
Twelve inches in the mud and slime before their eyes can wink.

But little cared our gallant six for roots, or slime, or mud,
For they were out for liquor as a soldier is for blood;
They hustled through the forest, nor stopped until they saw
Biggs, wrapt in contemplation, beside his cabin door.

He rose to greet his visitors, and ask them for the news,
And said he was so lonesome that he always had the blues;
He hadn't seen a paper for eighteen months, he said,
And that had been in Japanese--a language worse than dead.

They satisfied his thirst for news, then thought they of their own,
And Miller looked him in the eye and gave a little groan,
And all six men across their mouths did pass a sun-burnt hand
In a manner most deliberate, which all can understand.

"We heard you keep a bar, good Biggs," the gentle Poet said!
"And so we thought we'd hold you up, and we are almost dead!"
He said no more. Biggs understood, and thusly spoke to them
In accents somewhat British and prefixed with a "Hem!"

"The bar you'll find a few yards hence as up that trail you go;
I never keep my liquor in the blooming 'ouse, you know.
Just mush along and take a drink, and when you are content
Come back and tell me, if you can, who now is President."

They mushed along, those weary men, nor looked to left or right,
But thought of how each cooling drink would trickle out of sight;
And very soon they found the goal they came for from afar--
_A keg, half full of water, in a good old gravel bar!_

THE BACKSLIDING BROTHER

BY FRANK L. STANTON

De screech owl screech f'um de ol' barn lof';
"You drinked yo' dram sence you done swear off;
En you gwine de way
Whar' de sinners stay,
En Satan gwine ter roas' you at de Jedgmint Day!"

Den de ol' ha'nt say,