And therefore, Damon, you and I,
Who fain would live a year at least,
Reluctantly must modify
The scope of our projected feast;
A charcoal biscuit we will share,
Water (distilled, of course,) we'll swallow,
Since this appears the only fare
On which destruction will not follow!
SHAKSPEARE REVISED BY AN ALDERMAN.
"May I ask," said the worthy Alderman Davies, and he might have added, "I ask because 'Davies sum, non Œdipus'"—but he didn't, and it was a chance lost, "what salary you [the witness under examination] received for this conduct of yours while secretary?" To which witness answered, "£500 a year, and a bonus of £200." Whereupon the Alderman remarked, "Then all I can say is, you could have got many honest men to do the work for much less."
Quite so, Mr. Alderman, true for you; but if a man will act honestly for a sovereign, what might not the addition of ten shillings do? It ought to make him more honest comparatively, while another ten shillings would make him superlatively honest. But how if there were an obligation attached to the increase? Just a trifling deviation out of the straight course to begin with, to oblige a patron?
Let honesty be the drug in the market, and the rare herb dishonesty will be at a premium. It is gratifying to be assured, on aldermanic authority, that Shakspeare was wrong, and that in future for Hamlet's well-known dictum, "For to be honest as this world goes is to be as one man picked out of ten thousand," we must read "For to be dishonest as this world goes is to be as one man picked out of ten thousand."
Happy Alderman Davies! In what paradisiacal pastures must he have moved and breathed and earned his livelihood!
CIRCLING THE SQUARE.
Standing awhile at the corner crossing,
Watching a van as it lumbers past,
Something impels me to turn and saunter
Down to the Square, where I met you last.
Down to the Square with its formal garden
Slowly I pace—yet I scarce know why;
Somehow I never have since been near it,
Things have all changed since last July!