Echoes of Life Or, Beautiful Gems of Poetry and Song: A Choice Collection of ...

The Society upon the Stanislaus.

RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name is

Truthful James:

I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games; And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row

That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.

But first I would remark, that 'tis not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow man;

And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim, To lay for that same member for to "put a head on him!"

Now, nothing could be finer, or more beautiful to see, Than the first six months' proceedings of that same society;

Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.

Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,

From those same bones, an animal, that was extremely rare;

And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,

Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.

Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault; [vault;

It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones' family

He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown, And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.

Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass-at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order,
when

A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen;
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled

upon the floor,

And the subsequent proceedings interested him no

more.

For in less time than I write it, every member did engage

In a warfare with the remnants of a paleozoic age; And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,

Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.

And this is all I have to say of these improper games, For I live at Table Mountain and my name is Truthful James,

And I've told in simple language what I know about the row

That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.

-Bret Harte.

Faithless Nelly Gray.

EN BATTLE was a soldier bold,

BEN

And used to war's alarms;

But a cannon ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.

Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot."

The army surgeons made him limbs;
Said he, "They're only pegs;
But there's as wooden members quite,
As represent my legs."

Now Ben he loved a pretty maid-
Her name was Nelly Gray;
So he went to pay her his devours,
When he devoured his pay.

But when he called on Nelly Gray;
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off.

"O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
Is this your love so warm!
The love that loves a scarlet coat
Should be more uniform."

Said she, "I loved a soldier once,

For he was blithe and brave; But I will never have a man

With both legs in the grave.

"Before you had those timber toes

Your love I did allow;

But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now."

"O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajo's breaches."

"Why, then," said she, "you've lost the feet Of legs in war's alarms,

And now you cannot wear your
Upon your feats of arms!"

"O false and fickle Nelly Gray
I know why you refuse;

shoes

Though I've no feet, some other man Is standing in my shoes.

"I wish I ne'er had seen your face, But now, a long farewell!

For you will be my death; alas!

You will not be my Nell!"

Now when he went from Nelly Gray His heart so heavy got,

And life was such a burden grown, It made him take a knot,

So round his melancholy neck
A rope he did entwine,
And, for the second time in life,
Enlisted in the line.

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs;
And, as his legs were off-of course
He soon was off his legs.

And there he hung till he was dead
As any nail in town;

For, though distress had cut him up, It could not cut him down.

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died,
And they buried Ben in four cross roads
With a stake in his inside.

-Thomas Hood

To a Mosquito.

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O, these were sights to touch an anchorite !—
What, do I hear thy slender voice complain?
Thou wailest, when I talk of beauty's light,
As if it brought the memory of pain:
Thou art a wayward being-well, come near,
And pour thy tale of sorrow in my ear.

What sayest thou, slanderer? "Rouge makes thee sick,
And China bloom at best is sorry food;
And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick,

Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood!"
Go, 't was a just reward that met thy crime-
But shun the sacrilege another time!

That bloom was made to look at, not to touch, To worship, not approach, that radiant white; And well might sudden vengeance light on such

As dared, like thee, most impiously to bite. Thou shouldst have gazed at distance, and admired, Murmured thy adoration, and retired.

Thou'rt welcome to the town; but why come here
To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee?
Alas! the little blood I have is dear,

And thin will be the banquet drawn for me.
Look round-the pale-eyed sisters, in my cell,
Thy old acquantance, Song and Famine, dwell.
Try some plump alderman; and suck the blood
Enriched with generous wine, and costly meat;
In well-filled skins, soft as thy native mud,

Fix thy light pump, and raise thy freckled feet.
Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls,
The oyster breeds, and the green turtle sprawls.

There corks are drawn, and the red vintage flows,
To fill the swelling veins for thee; and now
The ruddy cheek, and now the ruddier nose,
Shall tempt thee as thou flittest round the brow;
And when the hour of sleep its quiet brings,
No angry hand shall rise to brush thy wings.
-William Cullen Bryant.

The Nose and the Eyes.

ETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose;
The spectacles set them, unhappily, wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To whom the said spectacles ought to belong.
So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause,
With a great deal of skill, and wig full of learning,
While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws-

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.

"In behalf of the Nose, it will quickly appear
(And your lordship," he said, will undoubtedly find)
That the Nose has the spectacles always to wear,

Which amounts to possession, time out of mind."

Then, holding the spectacles up to the court,
"Your lordship observes, they are made with a
straddle,

As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short,
Designed to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

'Again, would your lordship a moment suppose

('T is a case that has happened, and may happen
again)

That the visage or countenance had not a Nose,
Pray, who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?
"On the whole, it appears, and my argument shows,
With a reasoning the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles, plainly, were made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them.”
Then shifting his side (as a lawyer knows how),

He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes;
But what were his arguments, few people know,
For the court did not think them equally wise.
So his lordship decreed, with a grave, solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, without one if or but,
That whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,
By daylight or candlelight-Eyes should be shut.
-William Cowper.

To the Pliocene Skull.

A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS.

["A human skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant, not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being. The skull was found in a shaft one hundred and fifty feet deep, two

miles from Angel's in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Matson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, and he gave it to
Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey. . . . . The published volume of the State Survey on the Geology of California
states that man existed contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known
to exist."-Daily Paper]
66

PEAK, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil! | "Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium;
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,

Hid in lowest drifts below the earlies stratum

Of volcanic tufa!

Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogamia;
Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions
Of earth's epidermis!

"Eo-Mio-Plio-whatsoe'er the 'cene' was

"Tell us of thy food-those half-marine refections,
Crinoids on the shell, and Brachipods au naturel-
Cuttlefish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo
Seems a periwinkle.

That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder-
Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches-

Tell us thy strange story!

"Or has the Professor slightly antedated

By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,
Giving thee an air that 's somewhat better fitted
For cold-blooded creatures?

"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest
When above thy head the stately Sigillaria

Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant
Carboniferous epoch?

"Tell us of that scene-the dim and watery woodland,
Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect,
Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club-

mosses,

Lycopodiacea

"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus,
And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus,
While from time to time above thee flew and circled
Cheerful Pterodactyls.

"Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth's creation
Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secrets of thy past existence-
Speak! thou oldest primate !"

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla
And a lateral movement of the condyloid process,
With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication,
Ground the teeth together;

And from that imperfect dental exhibition,
Stained with expressed juices of the weed Nicotian,
Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmura
Of expectation:

"" "Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted
Falling down a shaft, in Calaveras County,
But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces
Home to old Missouri !"

-Bret Harte.

THE

Mrs. Caudle's Lecture on Shirt Buttons.

"HERE, Mr. Caudle, I hope you're in a little better temper than you were this morning. There, you needn't begin to whistle; people don't come to bed to whistle. But it's just like you; I can't speak, that you don't try to insult me. Once, I used to say you were the best creature living; now, you get quite a fiend. Do let you rest? No, I wont let you rest. It's the only time I have to talk to you, and you shall hear me. I'm put upon all day long: it's very hard if I can't speak a word at night; and it isn't often I open my mouth, goodness knows. Because once in your lifetime your shirt wanted a button, you must almost swear the roof off the house. You didn't swear? Ha, Mr. Caudle! you don't know what you do when

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