er, mothered chicks reviled,
From all relationships exiled,
To do my own lone scratching.

Fair science smiled upon my birth
One raw and gusty morning;
But ah, the sounds of barnyard mirth
To lonely me have little worth;
Alone am I in all the earth--
An orphan without borning.

Seek I my mother? I would find
A heartless personator;
A thing brass-feathered, man-designed,
With steam-pipe arteries intermined,
And pulseless cotton-batting lined--
A patent incubator.

It wearies me to think, you see--
Death would be better, rather--
Should downy chicks be hatched of me,
By fate's most pitiless decree,
My piping pullets still would be
With never a grandfather.

And when to earth I bid adieu
To seek a planet greater,
I will not do as others do,
Who fly to join the ancestral crew,
For I will just be gathered to
My incubator.

_Robert J. Burdette._

DIVIDED DESTINIES

It was an artless Bandar, and he danced upon a pine,
And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might dine,
And many, many other things, till, o'er my morning smoke,
I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamed that Bandar spoke.

He said: "Oh, man of many clothes! sad crawler on the Hills!
Observe, I know not Ranken's shop, nor Ranken's monthly bills!
I take no heed to trousers or the coats that you call dress;
Nor am I plagued with little cards for little drinks at Mess.

"I steal the bunnia's grain at morn, at noon and eventide
(For he is fat and I am spare), I roam the mountainside,
I follow no man's carriage, and no, never in my life
Have I flirted at Peliti's with another Bandar's wife.

"Oh, man of futile fopperies--unnecessary wraps;
I own no ponies in the Hills, I drive no tall-wheeled traps;
I buy me not twelve-button gloves, 'short-sixes' eke, or rings,
Nor do I waste at Hamilton's my wealth on pretty things.

"I quarrel with my wife at home, we never fight abroad;
But Mrs. B. has grasped the fact I am her only lord.
I never heard of fever--dumps nor debts depress my soul;
And I pity and despise you!" Here he pouched my breakfast-roll.

His hide was very mangy and his face was very red,
And undisguisedly he scratched with energy his head.
His manners were not always nice, but how my spirit cried
To be an artless Bandar loose upon the mountainside!

So I answered: "Gentle Bandar, an inscrutable Decree
Makes thee a gleesome, fleasome Thou, and me a wretched Me.
Go! D