I am not aware that Bob Parker has ever made any very serious attempt to write poetry for the public. Of course since he has been in love with the bewildering Magruder he has sometimes expressed his feelings in verse. But fortunately these breathings of passion were not presented to a cold and heartless world; they were reserved for the sympathetic Magruder, who doubtless read them with delight and admiration, and locked them up in her writing-desk with Bob's letters and other precious souvenirs. This, of course, is all right. Every lover writes what he considers poetry, and society permits such manifestations without insisting upon the confinement of the offenders in lunatic asylums. Bob, however, has constructed some verses which are not of a sentimental kind. Judge Pitman's story of the illumination of Cooley's nose suggested the idea which Bob has worked into rhyme and published in the Argus. As the poet has not been permitted to shine to any great extent in these pages as a literary person, it will perhaps be fair to reproduce his poem in the chapter which contains the account of Cooley's misfortune. Here it is:

Tim Keyser's Nose.

  1. Tim Keyser lived in Wilmington;
  2. He had a monstrous nose,
  3. Which was a great deal redder than
  4. The very reddest rose,
  5. And was completely capable
  6. Of most terrific blows.
  1. He wandered down one Christmas day
  2. To skate upon the creek,
  3. And there, upon the smoothest ice,
  4. He slid around so quick
  5. That people were amazed to see
  6. Him do it up so slick.

  1. The exercise excited thirst;
  2. And so, to get a drink,
  3. He cut an opening in the ice
  4. And lay down on the brink.
  5. He said, "I'll dip my lips right in
  6. And suck it up, I think."