Black Beetles in Amber

    And the prude;
  The adiposing dame
  With pimply face aflame;
  The kitten-playful virgin—
    Vergin' on to fifty years;
  The solemn-looking sturgeon
    Of a firm of auctioneers;
  The widower flirtatious;
  The widow all too gracious;
The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath.
One assassin picks the banjo, and another picks his teeth.

AT ANCHOR

The soft asphaltum in the sun;
Betrays a tendency to run;
Whereas the dog that takes his way
Across its course concludes to stay.

THE IN-COMING CLIMATE

Now o' nights the ocean breeze
  Makes the patient flinch,
For that zephyr bears a sneeze
  In every cubic inch.
Lo! the lively population
Chorusing in sternutation
A catarrhal acclamation!

A LONG-FELT WANT

Dimly apparent, through the gloom
Of Market-street's opaque simoom,
A queue of people, parti-sexed,
Awaiting the command of 'Next!'
A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:
'Teeth dusted nice—five cents a shine.'

TO THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

Wide windy reaches of high stubble field;
A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines;
A wagon moving in a 'cloud by day.'
Two city sportsmen with a dove between,
Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep—
A solitary dove, the only dove
In twenty counties, and it sick, or else
It were not there. Two guns that fire as one,
With thunder simultaneous and loud;
Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone!
And later, in the gloaming, comes a man—
The worthy local coroner is he,
Renowned all thereabout, and popular
With many a remain. All tenderly
Compiling in a game-bag the debris,
He glides into the gloom and fades from sight.
The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock,
Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet,
To die of age in some far foreign land.

SLANDER

FITCH:

'All vices you've exhausted, friend;
  So all the papers say.'

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