* The Yankee substitute for the chapeau de soie.
With tottering step and glazing eye he cleared the space
between,
And stabbed the air as stabs in grim Macbeth the younger
Kean:
Brave Lynch received him with a bang that stretched him
on the ground,
Then sat himself serenely down till all the crowd drew
round.
They hailed him with triumphant cheers—in him each
loafer saw
The bearing bold that could uphold the majesty of law;
And, raising him aloft, they bore him homewards at his
ease,—
That noble judge, whose daring hand enforced his own
decrees.
They buried Silas Fixings in the hollow where he fell,
And gum-trees wave above his grave—that tree he loved
so well;
And the 'coons sit chattering o'er him when the nights are
long and damp;
But he sleeps well in that lonely dell, the Dreary 'Possum
Swamp.
THE AMERICAN'S APOSTROPHE TO BOZ
[Rapidly as oblivion does its work nowadays, the burst of amiable indignation with which enlightened America received the issue of Boz's Notes can scarcely yet be forgotten. Not content with waging a universal rivalry in the piracy of the work, Columbia showered upon its author the riches of its own choice vocabulary of abuse; while some of her more fiery spirits threw out playful hints as to the propriety of gouging the "stranger," and furnishing him with a permanent suit of tar and feathers, in the very improbable event of his paying them a second visit. The perusal of these animated expressions of free opinion suggested the following lines, which those who remember Boz's book, and the festivities with which he was all but hunted to death, will at once understand. We hope we have done justice to the bitterness and "immortal hate" of these thin-skinned sons of freedom. When will Americans cease to justify the ridicule of Europe, by bearing rebuke, or even misrepresentation, calmly as a great nation should?]
Sneak across the wide Atlantic, worthless London's puling
child,
Better that its waves should bear thee, than the land thou
hast reviled;
Better in the stifling cabin, on the sofa thou shouldst lie,
Sickening as the fetid nigger bears the greens and bacon by;
Better, when the midnight horrors haunt the strained and
creaking ship,
Thou shouldst yell in vain for brandy with a fever-sodden
lip;
When amid the deepening darkness and the lamp's ex-
piring shade,
From the bagman's berth above thee comes the bountiful
cascade,
Better than upon the Broadway thou shouldst be at noon-
day seen,
Smirking like a Tracy Tupman with a Mantalini mien,
With a rivulet of satin falling o'er thy puny chest,
Worse than even P. Willis for an evening party drest!
We received thee warmly—kindly—though we knew thou
wert a quiz,
Partly for thyself it may be, chiefly for the sake of Phiz!
Much we bore, and much we suffered, listening to remorse-
less spells
Of that Smike's unceasing drivellings, and these everlast-
ing Nells.
When you talked of babes and sunshine, fields, and all
that sort of thing,
Each Columbian inly chuckled, as he slowly sucked his
sling;