THE FIRE-FIEND.-C. D. GARDETTE.

A NIGHTMARE.

The author of this was challenged to produce a poem, in the manner of "The Raven," which should be accepted by the general critic as a genuine composition of Mr. Poe's, and "The Fire-Fiend" was the result. It was printed as "from an unpublished MSS. of the late Edgar A. Poe," and the hoax proved sufficiently successful to deceive a number of critics in this country, and also in England.

In the deepest dearth of midnight, while the sad and solemn swell

Still was floating, faintly echoed from the forest chapel bell,

Faintly, falteringly floating o'er the sable waves of air

That were through the midnight rolling, chafed and billowy with the tolling,—

In my chamber I lay dreaming by the fire-light's fitful gleaming,

And my dreams were dreams foreshadowed on a heart foredoomed to care!

As the last long lingering echo of the midnight's mystic chime

Lifting through the sable billows to the thither shore of

time,

Leaving on the starless silence not a token nor a trace—
In a quivering sigh departed, from my couch in fear I

started;

Started to my feet in terror, for my dream's phantasmal error Painted in the fitful fire, a frightful, fiendish, flaming face!

On the red hearth's reddest centre, from a blazing knot of oak,

Seemed to gibe and grin this phantom when in terror I awoke,

And my slumberous eyelids straining as I staggered to the

floor,

Still in that dread vision seeming, turned my gaze toward the gleaming

Hearth, and--there!-O God! I saw it! and from out its flaming jaw it

Spat a ceaseless, seething, hissing, bubbling, gurgling stream of gore!

Speechless, struck with stony silence, frozen to the floor I stood,

Till methought my brain was hissing with that hissing, bubbling blood;

Till I felt my life-stream oozing, oozing from those lamben! lips;

Till the demon seemed to name me,--then a wondrous calm o'ercame me,

And my brow grew cold and dewy, with a death-damp stiff and gluey,

And I fell back on my pillow in apparent soul-eclipse!

Then, as in death's seeming shadow, in the icy pall of fear
I lay stricken, came a hoarse and hideous murmur to my

ear,

Came a murmur like the murmur of assassins in their sleep,

Muttering,"Higher! higher! higher! I am demon of the

fire!

I am arch-fiend of the fire! and each blazing roof's my pyre, And my sweetest incense is the blood and tears my victims

weep!

"How I revel on the prairie! How I roar among the pines! How I laugh when from the village o'er the snow the red

flame shines,

And I hear the shrieks of terror, with a life in every breath! How I scream with lambent laughter as I hurl each crackling rafter

Down the fell abyss of fire, until higher! higher! higher! Leap the high-priests of my altar in their merry dance of death!

“I am monarch of the fire! I am vassal-king of death! World-encircling, with the shadow of its doom upon my breath!

With the symbol of hereafter flaming from my fatal face! I command the eternal fire! Higher! higher! higher! higher!

Leap my ministering demons, like phantasmagoric lemans Hugging universal nature in their hideous embrace!"

Then a sombre silence shut me in a solemn, shrouded sleep, And I slumbered, like an infant in the “Cradle of the Deep," Till the belfry in the forest quivered with the matin stroke, And the martins, from the edges of its lichen-lidded ledges, Shimmered through the russet arches where the light in. torn files marches,

Like a routed army struggling through the serried ranks of oak.

Through my ivy-fretted casement filtered in a tremulous

note

From the tall and stately linden where a robin swelled his throat,

NUMBER TWO.

Querulous, Quaker-breasted robin, calling quaintly for his

mate!

Then I started up, unbidden, from my slumber night-mare ridden,

With the memory of that dire demon in my central fire,
On my eye's interior mirror like the shadow of a fate!

Ah! the fiendish fire had smouldered to a white and formless heap,

And no knot of oak was flaming as it flamed upon my sleep; But around its very centre, where the demon face had shone, Forked shadows seemed to linger, pointing as with spectral finger

To a Bible, massive, golden, on a table carved and oldenAnd I bowed, and said, "All power is of God, of God alone!"

MARK TWAIN'S OPINION OF CHAMBERMAIDS. Against all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the curse of bachelordom! Because:

They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the ancient and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your eyes. When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the morning, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but, glorying in their absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness, they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the pang their tyranny will cause you.

Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they undo your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has given you.

If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way, they move the bed.

If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They do it on purpose.

If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they don't, and so they move it.

They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It is because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and make wild sweeps for them in the dark with the boot-jack, and swear.

They always put the match-box in some other place. They hunt up a new place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass thing, where the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that glass thing, groping in the dark, and get yourself into trouble.

They are forever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in, in the night, you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in the morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the slop-bucket by the door, and the rocking-chair by the window, when you come in at midnight, or thereabouts, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you will proceed toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will disgust you. They like that.

No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay there. They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is their nature. And, besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and contrary this way. They would die if they couldn't be villains.

They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on the floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire with your valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap that you are more down on than any other, and which you are gradually wearing your life out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains you possibly can in that direction, but it won't be of any use, because they will always fetch that old scrap back and put it in the same old place again every time. It does them good.

And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with purloining the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a hereafter? Absolutely nothing.

If you leave your key in the door for convenience sake, they will carry it down to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the vile pretense of trying to protect

your property from thieves; but actually they do it because they want to make you tramp back down-stairs after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something. In which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide.

They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up, they don't come any more till next day.

They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out of pure cussedness, and nothing else.

Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.

I have cursed them in behalf of outraged bachelordom. They deserve it. If I can get a bill through the Legislature abolishing chambermaids, I mean to do it.

THE AMEN OF THE ROCKS.-ROSEGARTEN.
Though blind with age, forth Beda went with zeal

The tidings of salvation to proclaim.

Through town and hamlet, guided by a boy,

The pious father wandered, full of love,
And preached to dying men the word of life.

The boy once guided him into a vale
O'erstrewn with rocks and empty heaps of stone,
And there in wantonness, not malice, said:
"Most rev'rend father, many men are here,
And wait to hear the word of gospel truth."

The blind old man arose with joyful haste,
Chose him a text, explained it and applied,
Exhorted, warned, rebuked and comforted
So loving that the tears rolled down his cheeks
And gently hid themselves in his gray beard.
When in conclusion then, as it is fit,

He prayed the prayer the Saviour taught, and said:
"Thine is the kingdom, thine the power, and thine

The glory unto all eternity."

Then burst from out the vale a mighty shout:
"Amen, most rev'rend father," and "Amen!"