That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L. 1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:—

Here lies the body of Billy Green,
As true a grand master as ever was seen,
But although he was green and decidedly fat,
He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass,
false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a
lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a
measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tortoise-shell
cat.

THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE.
A MINER’S REMINISCENCE.

DOWN by the gulch, where the pickaxe’s ringing
Never struck chords with the stream’s smothered singing—
For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth:
Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath—
Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch,
Curses in purest American; such
Polyglot blasphemy didn’t leave much
Room for the rest of the languages—there,
Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear,
Naught but profanity ever in vogue,
Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue.

Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether
God has ordained they should travel together,
But if in tongue Erin’s music you trace,
Bet Erin’s sunshine peeps out in the face.
Anyhow, Father McCabe had ’em both,
Sunshine and harmony—natural growth.
While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath,
Right down among us he stepped: all the while
Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile,
And when that staggered the obstinate rogue,
Knocking him head over heels with his brogue.

Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins
Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins;
Sang at our windows for all they were worth—
Lucifer didn’t own all of the earth!
Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour;
Nobody hunted the right or left bower;
Deserts put verdure on—one little flower
Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root,
Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit!
Yes; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck’s thurrum pogue[L]
Couldn’t go back on a priest with the brogue!

ARAB WAR SONG.

ALLAH, il Allah! the infidel’s doom
Knells through the desert from rescued Khartoum.
The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords,
And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes.
The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears,
Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with fears.
How he reels, how he staggers in agony back!
Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track!

The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown,
When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town,
But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free
As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea;
And their valor will scatter his merciless bands
As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands,
Their fury will break on his terrified host
With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast.

Poor, pitiful fool! in his arrogant pride
He would chain the tornadó and fetter the tide;
He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast
As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast;
And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array
Is melting before our wild charges in spray;
Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls,
And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls!