"Life is real, life is earnest,
And the shell is not its pen,
Egg thou wert and egg remainest,
Was not spoken of the hen.
"In the world's broad field of battle,
In the great barnyard of life,
Be not like those lazy cattle,
Be a rooster in the strife.
"Lives of roosters all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And when roasted leave behind us
Hen-tracks on the sands of time.
"Hen-tracks that perhaps another chicken
Drooping idly in the rain,
Some forlorn and henpecked brother,
When he sees shall crow again."
The gem of the evening, however, was a recitation given in fine style by Mr. Chillingworth Chubb. He had rather a husky voice and a wooden arm. His memory, moreover, was defective. The effect of his wooden arm, which was made to perform the various actions of a real one, was highly amusing. (Here the reciter may use "Excelsior," "The Speech of Mark Antony," or some similar selection. The left arm represents the wooden one. The hand should wear a right-hand, white kid glove, put on wrong way round with the finger-tips screwed into points. The arm should be assisted in all its movements by the right one. It should be made to move in a jerky and unnatural manner at all its joints. A violent push at the elbow raises it suddenly aloft, and it is brought again to the side by a tremendous slap from the right hand. Finally, the arm appears to get out of order, and moves violently in all directions, until at last the right hand, after vainly trying to reach it, pins it down to a table or to some other object. This imitation requires considerable practise, but when properly done never fails to send an audience into fits of laughter.)
BOUNDING THE UNITED STATES
BY JOHN FISKE
Among the legends of our late Civil War there is a story of a dinner-party, given by the Americans residing in Paris, at which were propounded sundry toasts concerning not so much the past and present as the expected glories of the American nation. In the general character of these toasts, geographical considerations were very prominent, and the principal fact which seemed to occupy the minds of the speakers was the unprecedented bigness of our country.
"Here's to the United States!" said the first speaker,—"bounded on the north by British America, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean!" "But," said the second speaker, "this is far too limited a view of the subject, and, in assigning our boundaries, we must look to the great and glorious future, which is prescribed for us by the manifest destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race. Here's to the United States!—bounded on the north by the North Pole, on the east by the rising, and on the west by the setting, sun!"
Emphatic applause greeted the aspiring prophecy. But here arose the third speaker, a very serious gentleman, from the far West. "If we are going," said this truly patriotic gentleman, "to lessen the historic past and present, and take our manifest destiny into account, why restrict ourselves within the narrow limits assigned by our fellow countryman who has just sat down? I give you the United States!—bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by the primeval chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment!"