y innocent blood!

Furiously scratch him
Where'er yer may catch him!

Well, Bob, this course now is left,
Since thus of your tail you're bereft:
Tell your friend that by letter
From Paris
You have learned the style there is
To wear the tail short,
And the briefer the better;
Such is the passion,
That every Grimalkin will
Follow your fashion.

_Unknown._

A DIRGE

CONCERNING THE LATE LAMENTED KING OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

And so our royal relative is dead!
And so he rests from gustatory labors!
The white man was his choice, but when he fed
He'd sometimes entertain his tawny neighbors.
He worshipped, as he said, his "Fe-fo-fum,"
The goddess of the epigastrium.

And missionaries graced his festive board,
Solemn and succulent, in twos and dozens,
And smoked before their hospitable lord,
Welcome as if they'd been his second cousins.
When cold, he warmed them as he would his kin--
They came as strangers, and he took them in.

And generous!--oh, wasn't he? I have known him
Exhibit a celestial amiability:--
He'd eat an enemy, and then would own him
Of flavor excellent, despite hostility.
The crudest captain of the Turkish navy
He buried in an honorable grave--y.

He had a hundred wives. To make things pleasant
They found it quite judicious to adore him;--
And when he dined, the nymphs were always present--
Sometimes beside him and sometimes--before him.
When he was tired of one, he called her "sweet,"
And told her she was "good enough to eat."

He was a man of taste--and justice, too;
He opened his mouth for e'en the humblest sinner,
And three weeks stall-fed an emaciate Jew
Before they brought him to the royal dinner.
With preacher-men he shared his board and wallet
And let them nightly occupy his palate!

We grow like what we eat. Bad food depresses;
Good food exalts us like an inspiration,
And missionary on the _menu_ blesses
And elevates the Feejee population.
A people who for years, saints, bairns, and women ate
Must soon their vilest qualities eliminate.

But the deceased could never hold a candle
To those prim, pale-faced people of propriety
Who gloat o'er gossip and get fat on scandal--
The cannibals of civilized society;
They drink the blood of brothers with their rations,
And crunch the bones of living reputations.

They kill the soul; he only claimed the dwelling