"IF I don't make it, others will;
So I'll keep up my death-drugged still.
Come, Zip, my boy, pile on the wood,
And make it blaze as blaze it should;
For I do heartily love to see
The flames dance round it merrily!
"Hogsheads, you want?-well, order them made;
The maker will take his pay in trade.
If, at the first, he will not consent,
Treat him with wine till his wits are spent;
Then, when his reason is gone, you know
Whate'er we want from his hands will flow!
"Ah, what do you say?-'that won't be fair'?
You're conscientious, I do declare!
I thought so once, when I was a boy,
But since I have been in this employ
I've practised it, and many a trick,
By the advice of my friend, Old Nick.
I thought 't was wrong till he hushed my fears
With derisive looks, and taunts, and jeers,
And solemnly said to me, 'My Bill,
If you don't do it, some others will!'
"If I don't sell it, some others will;
So bottles, and pitchers, and mugs I'll fill.
When trembling child, who is sent, shall come,
Shivering with cold, and ask for rum
(Yet fearing to raise its wet eyes up),
I'll measure it out in its broken cup!
"Ah! what do you say?-'the child wants bread'?
Well, 't is n't my duty to see it fed;
If the parents will send to me to buy,
Do you think I'd let the chance go by
To get me gain? O, I'm no such fool;
That is not taught in the world's wide school!
"When the old man comes with nervous gait,
Loving, yet cursing his hapless fate,
Though children and wife and friends may meet,
And me with tears and with sighs entreat
Not to sell him that which will be his death,
I'll hear what the man with money saith;
If he asks for rum and shows the gold,
I'll deal it forth, and it shall be sold!
"Ah! do you say, 'I should heed the cries
Of weeping friends that around me rise'?
May be you think so; I tell you what,—
I've a rule which proves that I should not;
For, know you, though the poison kill,
If I don't sell it, some others will!"
A strange fatality came on all men,
Who met upon a mountain's rocky side;
They had been sane and happy until then,
But then on earth they wished not to abide.
The sun shone brightly, but it had no charm;
The soft winds blew, but them did not elate;
They seemed to think all joined to do them harm,
And urge them onward to a dreadful fate.
I did say "all men," yet there were a few
Who kept their reason well,—yet, weak, what could they do?
The men rushed onward to the jagged rocks,
Then plunged like madmen in their madness o'er;
From peak to peak they scared the feathered flocks,
And far below lay weltering in their gore.
The sane men wondered, trembled, and they strove
To stay the furies; but they could not do it.
Whate'er they did, however fenced the drove,
The men would spring the bounds or else break through it,
And o'er the frightful precipice they leaped,
Till rock and tree seemed in their red blood steeped.
One of the sane men was a great distiller
And one sold liquors in a famous city;
And, by the way, one was an honest miller,
Who looked on both their trades in wrath and pity.
This good "Honestus" spoke to them, and said,
"You'd better jump; if you don't, others will."
Each took his meaning, yet each shook his head.
"That is no reason we ourselves should kill,"
Said they, while very stupid-brained they seemed,
As though they of the miller's meaning never dreamed.
NOT MADE FOR AN EDITOR.
BEING A TRUE ACCOUNT OF AN INCIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE STUBBS FAMILY.
MR. and MRS. STUBBS were seated at the side of a red-hot cylinder stove. On one side, upon the floor, a small black-and-white dog lay very composedly baking himself; on the other, an old brown cat was, in as undisturbed a manner, doing the same. The warmth that existed between them was proof positive that they had not grown cold towards each other, though the distance between them might lead one to suppose they had.
In one corner of the room was the bust of a man, whose only existence was in the imagination of a miserable ship-carver, who, in his endeavors to breathe life into his block, came near breathing life out of himself, by sitting up late at night at his task. In the other hung a crook-necked squash, festooned with wreaths of spider-webs. Above the mantel-piece was suspended a painting representing a feat performed by a certain dog, of destroying one hundred rats in eight minutes. The frame in which this gem of art was placed was once gilt, but, at the time to which we refer, was covered with the dust of ages.
Mr. Stubbs poked the fire. Mrs. Stubbs poked the dog, when suddenly the door flew open, and their son entered with blackened eyes, bloody hands; bruised face and dirty clothes, the most belligerent-looking creature this side of the "Rio Grande."
"My voice a'nt still for war, it's loud for war," he said, as, with a braggadocia sort of air, he threw his cap at the dog, who clenched it between his teeth, shook it nearly to tatters, and then passed it over to the cat.
"What's the matter now, Jake?" said Mrs. Stubbs. "Always in trouble,—fights and broils seem to be your element. I don't know, Jake, what will become of you, if you go on at this rate. What say you, father?"
Mr. Stubbs threw down the poker, and casting a glance first at his hopeful son, and then at his hoping wife, replied that Jake was an ignorant, pugnacious, good-for-nothing scamp, and never would come to anything, unless to a rope's end.
"O, how can you talk so?" said his wife. "You know it's nat'ral."