You may be the Rector of the finest cathedral in the place, the mayor of the city, the judge of the supreme court, or even the governor of the state, and should your hat chance to blow off and roll in front of him,—though it should cost him a fall upon the pavement,—that man will kick it. I tell you he will kick it, and soundly too. He will make no mincing about it, but go for it, as he would for his neighbor’s pig, should he find it in his garden of cabbages. At such he is full of words also, and can bestow upon the stone that trips him up the same flow of abuse that he can shower upon the man who assists him to his feet.
THE CONTENTED FROG.
The frog that once in Selby’s dam
Its weird music shed,
Now lies as mute as stranded clam—
Because that frog is dead.
So sleeps the plague of former days,
So noisy nights are o’er,
And he now on the pond decays
Who long cried, “Sleep no more!”