“Don’t my uniform tell you that I
Am of the unfortunate band,
Whom you see day by day passing by,
Never pausing a moment to stand;
Who, in one perpetual round,
Forever are marching, until
It seems that while one of us stays overground
Fate ordains he shall never be still.
“’Tis hard when the bright golden sun
Smiles out from a clear azure sky,
To set out on a pilgrimage ne’er to be done
Till his glory has gone and passed by.
And e’en along green country lanes,
’Mid the scent of the newly mown hay,
And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains,
Who would care to be tramping all day?
“Then why do you wonder to hear
An unlucky sad mortal complain,
Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty near,
In this ne’er-ending, pitiless rain?
Or say, are you looking for smiles
From a fellow who feels on the rack,
After walking some twenty odd miles
On a path like a porcupine’s back?
“They say that the Muscovite knout,
On the back of a troublesome peasant,
When wielded by hands that are stout,
Is decidedly very unpleasant.
The rack and the thumb-screw, I’m told,
Caused aught but delightful sensations,
But what were their tortures of old,
Compared to our new innovations?
“No martyr that ever yet died
In those times that have long passed away,
Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried,
Suffered more than I’ve suffered to-day.
My feet are denuded of skin,
My toes every one are disjointed,
For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin,
And the most of our pavement is pointed!
“Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw,
Or the glass of a smashed window-pane,
Save where an occasional flaw
Leaves a hole in to gather the rain—”
Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek
That emptied a neighboring tavern,
He had planted one foot on a peak,
While the other was lost in a cavern!
Then his language assumed such a tone—
And one not by any means sweeter—
And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan
That they couldn’t be put into metre.
So thus my sad narrative ends,
As I left the poor tortured one raving,
And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends
Would survive Boston’s wonderful paving.
APROPOS OF THE CENSUS.
IF they do not call for the census papers in our street soon, we shall have a revolution. The crisis has arrived in Ryan’s already. Mrs. Ryan’s mother came a day or two before the numbering of the people to assist Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether unconnected with the census. The enumerator hadn’t called for the paper on Tuesday last, and on that morning there was another visitor at Ryan’s. Mrs. Ryan and her mother insist that the latest comer must be added to the list. Ryan, who is conscientious to a decimal point, argues that the important personage in question has no moral right to figure in the population for another ten years. After an animated and personal discussion on this point, Ryan retired to his study, took out the census paper, and filled up the last column by appending to his sainted mother-in-law’s name the classical expression “idiot!” That lady got hold of the document later, and she filled up Ryan’s own blank with the declaration that he was a brute, blind, deaf, dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the blue pages afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity he was guilty of will not be known until the collector comes round. We expect something rather lively on that occasion.