ney patter.

"HORACE'S _Piso_ were a pleasant chum
Compared with slangy laureates of the slum.
Hist! There's a tenor twitter,
A tremulous twangle of the minor strings.
'Tis SERAPHIN, sleek Amateur, who sings,
'Glide where the moonbeams glitter!'

"'To puling girls that listen and adore
Your love-lorn chants and woful wailings pour!'
Sang HORACE to HERMOGENES.
SERAPHIN'S a TIGELLIUS, and his style
Would bring the bland Venusian's scornful smile
The scowl of sour DIOGENES.

"'Twere 'breaking butterflies upon the wheel'
To let such fribbles feel the critic steel
With scalpel-like severity?
Granted! But will no pangs the victims urge
To abate that plague of bores, which is the scourge
Of social insincerity?

"Wisdom is here, and Wit, Talent and Taste:
The latest wanderer from the Tropic Waste,
Sun-bronzed and care-lined, saunters
In cheery chat with mild-faced MIRABEL,
Who with Romance's wildest weirdest spell
Has witched your Mudie-haunters.

"Colossal BAYARD, _beau-sabreur_, whose blade
A dozen desert spearmen faced and stayed,
Stoops his high-shoulder'd stature
To hear the twittering tones of Tiny TIM,
A midget, but the soul of whit and whim,
The genius of good-nature.

"Boy-faced, but virile, vigorous, and a peer,
Lord MOSSMORE talks with VIOLET DE VERE,
The latest light of Fiction;
Steadily-rising statesman, season's star!
Calmly he hears, though Caste's keen instincts jar,
Her strained self-conscious diction.

"MELDRUM, the modish _medico_, laughs low
At ruddy RASPER'S keenly-whispered _mot_--
RASPER, a soul all strictures,
Holds the great world a field for sketchy chaff.
Many love not the man, but how they laugh
At his swift, scathing pictures!

"Wits of all grades, and Talents of all sorts,
With rival beauties holding separate courts,
Find here parade, employment.
And yet, and yet, they all look cross, or tired;
Your cultured city has not yet acquired
The art of true enjoyment.

"Strange! London's poor find pleasure far too dear,
But here, with wealth, and wit, and charm, and cheer,
All should go _so_ delightfully.
Time gay as in the Golden Age should fleet,
But the most brilliant stars in Babylon meet,
And--bore each other frightfully."

(_To be continued._)

* * * * *

IN THE NAME OF CHARITY--GO TO PRISON!

L