He sighed, and low upon his hands And then he lifted up his face, But started back aghast, The room, by strange and sudden change, It seemed a Senate-hall, and one The 'wildered teacher thought he knew "And for his name," said he, "the same The stately Senate-hall dissolved, A church rose in its place, Wherein there stood a man of God, And though he spoke in solemn tone, The teacher's thought was strangely wrought: "I whipped that boy to-day." The church, a phantasm, vanished soon; In classic gloom of alcoved room An author plied his pen. "My idlest lad!" the teacher said, The vision of a cottage home "A miracle! a miracle! This matron, well I know, Was but a wild and careless child, "And when she to her children speaks Her lips repeat in accents sweet, The scene was changed again, and lo, "A dream!" the sleeper, waking, said, And, whistling slow and soft and low, And, walking home, his heart was full ADDRESS OF SPOTTYCUS. It had been a circus day in East Kittery Centre. James Myers, the grand and awful tumbler, had amused the populace with the sports of the ring, to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. The sounds of cavalry had died away; the roar of the ragged-tailed ourang-outang had ceased; the lanterns had been extinguished. The moon, piercing the impenetrable tissue of woolly clouds, showed her benevolent nature by silvering the brass buttons of a man going across the street, and casting its irradiant beams through an extensive aperture in the canvas, tipped the foam-capped waves in a bucket of dirty water with a wavy, mellowy light. No sound was heard, save the gentle breathings of the elephant, only answered at intervals by the pitiless moanings of the nine-legged calf in the side tent, which had been cruelly deprived of its supper. Under a cart, in one corner, a little band of acrobats were seated, their coun tenances still dirty from the agony of conflict, tobacco-juice running down their under lips, the daubs of paint still lingering on their brows, when Spottycus, the head clown, limping forth from amid the company, thus addressed them: Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call him chief, who, for three long weeks, has stumped every man, woman, child, and beast that has entered our show, to fight, and who never yet has run. If there be one among you who can say that ever, in Irish row or private fight, my actions did not confirm my tongue, let him step up and say it. If there be nine in all your company dare face me, let them come on! And yet I was not always thus, a hired buffoon, a scaly chief of still more scaly men. My ancestors came from old Scarborough, and settled among the loose rocks and leafless groves of East Moluncus. My early life ran quiet as the puddle in which I played; and when, at noon, I gathered the hogs beneath the sunshine, and played upon a borrowed tuning-fork, there was a friend, the son of the man that lived in the next house, to join me in the pastime. We let our hogs into the same man's turnip-field, and partook together our rusty meal. One evening, after the hogs and hens were foddered, and we were all seated beneath the currant-bush which shaded our cottage, my great-grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon Crossing, and Thermopylæ Court-house, and Lucknow Corner, and the Aroostook war, in which he had been riddled with bullets; and how, on previous occasions, a little band of Choctaws had run before a big army. I knew not, till then, what war was; but then my undimpled cheeks did burn, and to show my newborn fire, I pulled the hair of that venerable man, until my mother, taking me by the nape of the neck, slapped my throbbing chops, and packed me off to bed, bidding me exercise no more my warlike spirit. That night a burglar entered our house. I saw my mother trampled on by the hoof of a big dog, the sleeping form of my father flung amid the blazing rafters of our hog-pen. These insults were too much. I left the vicinity and joined a circus. "To-day, you know, I killed a hydrophobious dog in the arena; and when I gazed intently on him, behold! it was 'old dog Tray,' my old friend's dog. He made one pass at me, bit a farewell hunk out of my leg, kicked, and died,—the samme tail, shorter only by six inches, which he used to wear when he and his master and I, in adventurous infancy, scaled the picket-fence to pluck the first ripe potato-balls, and bear them home in childish exultation! I told the proprietor that the deceased had been my friend's dog, homely, faithful, and kind, and I begged that I might convey away the carcass to a taxidermist, and sell the skin for ' nippers.' Ay! upon my head, amid the blood and mud of the arena, I begged that poor boon, while all the assembled maids and mothers, and the scrabble, shouted in derision; deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see the prince of clowns turn red and grumble about the piece of bleeding dog-flesh. And the proprietor drew back, as I were dilution, and sternly said, 'Let the beast alone! It shall not be mee(a)t for you.' And so, fellow-acrobats, rusticusses, clowns, must you as well as I be bluffed by these covetous proprietors. O Rum, Rum! thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Ay! thou hast given to that indigent, unostentatious hog-boy, who never heard a louder noise than a thunderbolt, cast-iron muscles, and a heart of brick, taught him to run his hands within the mails and pocket cash, to run his sword against brick buildings and stone walls, to gaze into the bleared eyeballs of the fierce Khamscatkan woodpecker, even as a young lady upon an intimate cat! And he shall pay thee back as soon as the yellow Paddygumpus shall turn red as frothing logwood, and in its deepest juice the codfish lie cradled! "Ye stand there now like rowdies, as ye are! There is no tin within your gaping pockets; and to-morrow, or next day, some rustic Polyphemus, breathing of onions from his infinite mouth, shall with his freckled fingers point at your red noses, and bet a three-cent piece on your head. Hark! Hear ye yon giraffe roaring in his hen-coop? "Tis six weeks since he has tasted food; but to-morrow they will, as likely as not, give him your breakfast, and miserable fodder will it be for him, by the way. If ye know nothing at all, scarcely, work then like dogs, for almost nothing and board! If ye are men, follow me; leave the concern, run off with the horses, and set up for yourselves, as your ancestral grandfathers did at old Spoodinkum. Is Scarborough dead? Is the old 'New England' that you drank to-day dried up within you, that ye do skulk and squat, like a be-horse-whipped pup beneath his master's barn? O fellow comrades, rusticusses, clowns! if we must turn inside out, let us do it for ourselves! If we must turn summersets for subsistence, let us do it under a clean tent, with horses that are not lame in more than three legs, ponies that have tails, and horses that haven't sore backs! Let us carve for ourselves, in the annals of cavalry, names which shall far transcend those of all that the world calls great, so that all the champions and knights of old,-Skipio, Alabamacanus, the Knights of Malta, the Arabian Nights, the Spanish Cid,—shall sink into insignificance before us. Let us spur on our painted-white steeds, till we reach the summit of equine renown." THE BROWNS.-THOMAS DUNN ENgLish. Margery Brown in her arm-chair sits, Here is a coat with a rent in the sleeve; Here is a sock with a hole in the toe; Timothy Brown starts a-field in the morn, To follow the plough-tail for many an hour; |