Those guinea-pigs—O what a tide!—
Were versed in plain Arithmetic;
The way they upped and multiplied
Made Captain Noah mighty sick.
And four days out he turned about,
And made back to the pier once more
To rid himself of all that rout,
And put the guinea-pigs ashore.
And where there were but two of these
When starting on that famous trip,
When they got back from off the seas,
Three hundred thousand left the ship!
Poor Noah! He took this publication so much to heart that he offered a reward of a thousand dollars, and a first-class passage on his cruise to the top of Mount Ararat to any one who could give him the name of the miscreant who had written the lines, but he has never yet found out who did them, and until he reads these memoirs after I have passed away, he will never know from how near home they came.
Finally let me say that in a more serious vein as a Poet I was not wanting in success—that is in my own judgment. As a mystic poet nothing better than the following came from my pen:
O arching trees that mark the zenith hour,
How great thy reach, how marvellous thy power,
So lavishly outpouring all thy rotund gifts
On mortal ways, in superhuman shifts
That overtax the mind, and vex the soul of man,
As would the details of some awful plan,
Jocund, mysterious, complex, and yet withal
Enmeshed with Joy and Sorrow, as a pall
Envelops all the seas at eventide, and brings
New meaning to the song the Robin sings
When from her nest matutinal she squirms
And hies her forth for adolescent worms
With which her young to feed, yet all the time
With heart and soul laments my dulcet rhyme!
Of this I was naturally quite proud, and when under the title of "Maternity" I read it once in secret to my Aunt Jerusha, she burst into tears as I went on, and three days later read it as a New Thought gem before the Enochsville Society of Ethical Culture. It was there pronounced a great piece of symbolic imagery, and prediction was made that some day in some more advanced age than our own, a Magazine would be found somewhere that would print it. This may be so, but I fear I shall not live to see it.