"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the little boy at school—
His just 'fore Christmas goodness makes him mindful of each rule;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" sings the gamin in the street;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" on our every hand we meet.
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the yawning money-box
Meant to catch the coin to feed the hungry folks in flocks;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the wretched and the poor,
Living in their penury a stone's throw from your door.
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the great big world, of you;
"Lifetime full of usefulness, heart sincere and true?"
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" Hear it everywhere you go—
Always comes the answer, "Oh, just sumpin, I dunno."
Baltimore American.
THE ORIGINAL GRAFTER.
"And Crœsus lifted up his voice and cried, 'Solon! Solon!' And King Cyrus ordered that the fire be extinguished and the captive released."—Herodotus.
There's a basis for a thesis in the history of Crœsus—
Mr. Crœsus, Greece's captain of finance;
It contains an exegesis on the clippings of the fleeces
Of the lambs, when Wall Street's breezes are not tempered, and the geese's
Ravished feathers pay the piper for the dance.
"In the days of old Rameses, this here story had paresis"—
So says Kipling, and what he says goes with me,
But old or new, it pleases me at times to save the pieces
Of the stories of the glories and the grandeurs that were Greece's,
When they prophesy a modern case, you see.
The capture of old Crœsus was a stunt of the police's
That for up-to-dateness seizes me with joy.
He was roasted like a cheese is, out there on the Chersonesus,
Till he hollered for his lawyer—"Solon!"
Ay, that's where the squeeze is—
"Technicality"—trial ceases—"vindication"—this release is
What the grafters count on nowadays, my boy!