scan,
For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose)
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

On the coasts that incessantly freeze,
With his stones, and his bones, and his bows,
On luxuriant tropical leas,
Where the summer eternally glows,
He is found, and his habits disclose
(Let theology say what she can)
That he lived in the long, long agos,
Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

From a status like that of the Crees
Our society's fabric arose,--
Develop'd, evolved, if you please,
But deluded chronologists chose,
In a fancied accordance with Mos
es, 4000 |B.C.| for the span
When he rushed on the world and its woes,--
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

But the mild anthropologist--_he's_
Not _recent_ inclined to suppose
Flints Palaeolithic like these,
Quaternary bones such as those!
In Rhinoceros, Mammoth and Co.'s
First epoch the Human began
Theologians all to expose,--
'Tis the _mission_ of Primitive Man.

ENVOY

Max, proudly your Aryans pose,
But their rigs they undoubtedly ran,
For, as every Darwinian knows,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

_Andrew Lang._

PHILLIS'S AGE

How old may Phillis be, you ask,
Whose beauty thus all hearts engages?
To answer is no easy task:
For she has really two ages.

Stiff in brocade, and pinch'd in stays,
Her patches, paint, and jewels on;
All day let envy view her face,
And Phillis is but twenty-one.

Paint, patches, jewels laid aside,
At night astronomers agree,
The evening has the day belied;
And Phillis is some forty-three.

_Matthew Prior._

V

CYNICISM

GOOD AND BAD LUCK

Good Luck is the gayest of all gay girls;
Long in one place she will not stay:
Back from your brow she strokes the curls,
Kisses you quick and flies away.

But Madame Bad Luck soberly comes
And stays--no fancy has she for flitting;
Snatches of true-love songs she hums,
And sits by your bed, and brings her knitting.

_John Hay._

BANGKOLIDYE

"Gimme my scarlet tie,"
Says I.
"Gimme my brownest boots and hat,
Gimme a vest with a pattern fancy,
Gimme a gel with some style, like Nancy,
And then--well, it's gimes as I'll be at,
Seein' as its bangkolidye,"