eer."

There was a young lady of Venice
Who used hard-boiled eggs to play tennis;
When they said, "You are wrong,"
She replied, "Go along!
You don't know how prolific my hen is!"

There was a young man of Fort Blainey,
Who proposed to his typist named Janey;
When his friends said, "Oh, dear!
She's so old and so queer!"
He replied, "But the day was so rainy!"

XIII

NONSENSE

LUNAR STANZAS

Night saw the crew like pedlers with their packs
Altho' it were too dear to pay for eggs;
Walk crank along with coffin on their backs
While in their arms they bow their weary legs.

And yet 'twas strange, and scarce can one suppose
That a brown buzzard-fly should steal and wear
His white jean breeches and black woollen hose,
But thence that flies have souls is very clear.

But, Holy Father! what shall save the soul,
When cobblers ask three dollars for their shoes?
When cooks their biscuits with a shot-tower roll,
And farmers rake their hay-cocks with their hoes.

Yet, 'twere profuse to see for pendant light,
A tea-pot dangle in a lady's ear;
And 'twere indelicate, although she might
Swallow two whales and yet the moon shine clear.

But what to me are woven clouds, or what,
If dames from spiders learn to warp their looms?
If coal-black ghosts turn soldiers for the State,
With wooden eyes, and lightning-rods for plumes?

Oh! too, too shocking! barbarous, savage taste!
To eat one's mother ere itself was born!
To gripe the tall town-steeple by the waste,
And scoop it out to be his drinking-horn.

No more: no more! I'm sick and dead and gone;
Boxed in a coffin, stifled six feet deep;
Thorns, fat and fearless, prick my skin and bone,
And revel o'er me, like a soulless sheep.

_Henry Coggswell Knight._

THE WHANGO TREE

The woggly bird sat on the whango tree,
Nooping the rinkum corn,
And graper and graper, alas! grew he,
And cursed the day he was born.
His crute was clum and his voice was rum,
As curiously thus sang he,
"Oh, would I'd been rammed and eternally clammed
Ere I perched on this whango tree."

Now the whango tree had a bubbly thorn,
As sharp as a nootie's bill,
And it stuck in the woggly bird's umptum lorn
And weepadge, the smart did thrill.
He fumbled and cursed, but that wasn't the worst,
For he coul