Yours truly,
Constant Reader.
There is often some fun at auctions. One of the queerest ever reported to us was held in a French-Spanish be-Germanized village on the frontier, where business was transacted in something of a polyglott manner, as follows:
'Gentlemen-Messieurs-Senores y meine Herrne, I've got here for sale—a vender—a vendre zum verkaufen eine Schöne Büchse a first-rate rifle un fusil sans pareil, muy hermosa! Do I hear fifty pesos, cinquante Thaler ge-bid pour this here bully gun? Caballeros mira como es aplatado—all silvered up, in tip-top style—c'est de l'argent fin messieurs—s'ist alles von gutem Silber, Gott verdammich wenn's nicht echt is. Cinquante piastres, fünfzig, fünfzig, fifty do I hear, and a half an' a half an' a half e un demi piastre un d'mi un d'mi ein halb' und ein halb' und ein halb' un medio y tin medio—wer sagt six shillins, six escalins, six escalins, seis reales, sechs schillin!? For this beautiful gun, good for Injuns, deer, bar, buffalo, or to kill one another with—madre Dios! bueno por matar los Americanos—first-rate to kill a Greaser—womit Sie alles was nicht Deutsch ist zu todten. Fifty-one dollars, thanky sir—cinquante deux—Merci, Monsieur! Wer sagt drei und fünfzig—ich glaube dass ein Deutscher bekommt's noch am Ende. Go it, Yankee, Dutch is a-gainin' on ye! and a half an' a half e trois quar' r' r' an' three quarters und drei Viertel y tres quartos—quelqu'un a dit fifty-three—fifty-four—going, going, gone, sir—at fifty-four—America ahead and Frenchy second-best.'
It would take some time, we should think, to be able to reel it off in such a quadruple thread.
Two 'after-Norse' poems are ours this month-the first from an esteemed Philadelphia correspondent—the second from another of the same State, but more inland. The following, we may observe, is written in the measure which most prevails in Icelandic poems:
THE VIKINGS.
Through the brown waters
Dash the swift prows;
At the helm Valor stands,
Death at the bows:
Vainly the foeman shrinks,
Palsied in fright,
Vain are his struggles, yet
Vainer his flight.
Triple defenses—
Fire, water, and steel,
Guard the gate of the West
From the Northerner's keel.
Though defiant at midnight,
Ere morning the wrath
Of the terrible sea-kings
Has leveled a path.
Rampart and heavy gun
From o'er the bay,
Whose broad waters stretch
'Twixt the ships and their prey:
But shattered the rampart lies,
Silent the gun,
As the circle of living fire
Madly rolls on.
Wide yawn the timbers,
Wild waters rush in,
As the ship settles fast
Mid the fierce battle-din:
Yet her guns hurl defiance,
As, stern to the last,
The sea sucks her in
With her flag on the mast.
Sons of the Northman,
Whose banner of old
Spread the shadow of terror
From each grisly fold,
Of his broad heritage
Worthy are ye:
Win it and wear it well,
Kings of the sea.
The next 'Norse' is longer. We find in it a brave ring of true poetry:
1861.
'Oh! dark and true and tender is the North.'