Puck — April 30, 1879 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PUCK. = TO A DRAGON FLY. You hail from Dream-land, Dragon-Fly ? A stranger hither? So am I, And (sooth to say) I wonder why We either of us came. . Are you (that shine so bright i’ the air) King Oberon’s state-messenger ? Come tell me how my old friend's fare, Is Dream-land still the same ? Who won the latest tourney fight, King Arthur, or the Red Cross Knight, Or he who bore away the bright Renowned Mambrino’s Casque ? Is Caliban King’s councillor yet? Cross Mentor jester still and pet ? Is Suckling out of love and debt? Has Spenser done his task? Say, have they settled over there, Which is the loveliest, Guinevere Or Gloriana or the fair Young Queen of Oberon’s Court? And does Titania torment still Mike Drayton and sweet-throated Will? In sooth of her amours 'twas ill To make such merry sport. Ah, I have been too long away! No doubt I shall return some day. But now I’m lost in love and may Not leave my lady’s sight. Mine is (of course) the happier lot. Yet—tell them I forget them not, My pretty gay compatriot, When you go home to-night, —Mary A. P. Robinson in Scribner's for May, IN THE SPRING. In the spring the merry robin jumps about upon the lawn; In the spring Adolphus Riley puts his sealskin cap in pawn. In the spring fair Musidora wears a rosebud in her locks; In the spring the painter painteth, ‘‘Use Jones's Salve” upon the rocks. In the spring the oxlip blossoms in the leas and on the hills; In the spring the blushing maiden takes her share of bilious pills. In the spring the weary husband beats the car- pet in the grove; In the spring the weary husband wrestles with the parlor stove. In the spring unto the poet saith the editor “Get hence!” In the spring the circus poster decorates the coal-yard fence, In the spring within the forest blows the violet, the fern; In the spring the small-boy shivers as he gazes on the churn, In the spring the happy poet thinks forever he would live: In the spring the can’s connected with the ca- nine’s narrative. In the spring the downy cloudship sails serenely o’er the flats; In the spring the maiden’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of hats, In the spring through rosy bowers doth the brooklet wend its way; In the spring—but wherefore should I thus give “ Gentle Spring ” away? —Mew York Star, Tue Czar is not yet a-Nihil-ated sovereign. —Phila, Bulletin, A MAN with a creaky pair of boots has music in his sole.—S, F. Wasp. Ir is possible that Captain Williams doesn’t know his club is loaded.—Derrick, Boston editors have a high old time. Most of them are up six flights.— Bangor Commer- cial, Wuen you offer a tramp bread, and he makes a rye face, you can conclude he prefers whiskey. — Toronto Grip. A GERMAN proverb says: ‘Man is what he eats.” What the Old Harry can Zach. Chandler be made of ?— Boston Post. Horatio Seymour has begun to decline the Presidency a little earlier than usual this time. —Cincinnati Saturday Night. AN exchange says that Napoleon IV. is always poring over books. He never reigns, but he pores.—. Y. Herald, “Our First Bany”’ is the title of a new book. It is bound in muslin, of course, and has a weak back.—Spring City Sun. In Kentucky there is a game law which pro- tects the shooting of judges between May roth and the middle of June.—. Y. Herald. C. O. Mic says that the conduit through which flows the political refuse of the day is unquestionably sewer-generous.— Yonkers Ga- zelle, Every business man in the city should have a copy of the Directory. Go to the Herald office at once and purchase one,— Zhe Modern Argo, Batp heads are often called billiard balls. The resemblance ceases when a billiard ball is moving, for then it is not a ball dead.— IWaite- hall Times, It is now intimated that the reason that Sam- son carried off the Gates of Gaza was because they would not give him the gate-money,— Bos- ton Commercial Bulletin, Since the war everything has gone down, except the price of postage stamps, Where are the newspapers that do the national fault- finding ?—St. Louis Spirit. A very small needle, if gently placed on the surface of water, will float. If very small boys would do likewise, they would save their parents many funeral expenses.-— Wheeling Leader. Ir is learned by the Syracuse Herald that Jerome Bonaparte was the man who struck Mr. Patterson—he did it for the old gentle- man’s daughter.— Pittsburgh Telegraph. We would like to exchange with all the newspapers that ask us to do so, but, really, it is impossible. We must print a paper occa- sionally for a subscriber.— Cincinnati Saturday Night. Tue pedestrian who walks soo miles in six days, never travels faster than a boy does when he is dispatched to the cellar for a scuttle of coal while a circus pageant is passing the house. —N. Y. Star, Tue story is told of an Iowa man that he has been married four times, and has all four of his mothers-in-law living with him in one house. Well, by George! we believe that story about Daniel, now.— Rochester Express. A man in the west-end guarantees an infalli- ble cure for consumption for the triflng sum of one hundred dollars. This amount of course includes the price of the coffin and the other funeral expenses.— Baltimore Every Sat. “Curist was born a Jew: he might have been a Greek,” and a very amused smile steal- ing over the congregation, the preacher thought perhaps some of his parishioners had spied him at the Pinafore matinée.— New Haven Register. Wuen in full dress the Zulus wear a ring in the nose and that’s all.—A/bany Argus. Isn't that enough to wear in the nose? Perhaps you want an African gentleman to carry around a whole jewelry store in his proboscis.—. 4, Register. A Boston paper says that “ Joaquin Miller stalks round town accompanied by a couple of stalwart retainers.” We take it for granted that the latter are for the purpose of holding the Bostonians while Wauk reads his poetry to them. They need to be stalwart.—San Fran. cisco Post, Ar last it has been discovered “ How to keep a boy on the farm.” ‘The plan is to kill him and bury him six feet deep in the barn-yard, ‘This rule does not apply in Ohio, however, where body-snatching makes it extremely doubt- ful where the boy would be a week after burial, Norristown Herald. Tue Lord promised Noah never to have an- other flood because He knew the world was go- ing to become so bad that He couldn’t find anybody to take charge of an ark, and even the animals would be breaking out of their cages and eating up the people on the front seats.— Steubenville Herald, Sxotor, the muffin marksman, who attempted to shoot the czar, made a hit, notwithstanding his many misses. He shattered the jaw of a detective, and if that doesn’t endear him enough to his countrymen to insure their for- giving him for his wasting so much ammunition on a royal corpus, then Russians have little in common with us.— Yonkers Gazette. “Do the northern people ever reflect,’ asks the Atlanta Constitution, “that we have no sand- bag, car-hook, slung-shot and billy murders in the South?” Emphatically, never!—well,— occasionally, perhaps; when we consider the Currie, or the Buford, or the Cox, or the Poin- dexter murder. Their victims are all just about as dead as if they had been sand-bagged or car- hooked.— Philadelphia Bulletin. A Few days ago we felt called upon to kill the peach crop, owing to the remissness of the telegraph. It didn’t work. ‘The peach crop lives and is going to be enorinous, so says the telegraph this morning. It is always the way. We never undertook to interfere with other folks’ business without making a failure of it; but we'll bet a dollar that peaches won't be cheap, notwithstanding the big crop.—New Haven Register. “Ou, pshaw!” exclaimed the gentleman who has just billed Burlington for a lecture on “The Frauds of the Bible,” closing an animated theo- logical discussion in a Main street bar-room. “Oh, pshaw; they ain’t no sense talking that way about him. I'm willin’ to give Moody credit for all the good points he’s got. He's an earnest enough man; b'lieves what he says, honest enough in his opinions, I reckon; but dog-gon it the man’s coarse; he ain't got no kulcher.” And the discussion ended.—Hawh- ge. “In thesecond sermon I ever preached from that text, ‘A mess of pottage,’ I got it ‘A pot of message,’ and the worst of it was that I kept repeating the blunder all through the sermon, to the intense amusement of the congregation, and some impairment, I fear, of the lesson of the discourse. The Devil seemed to be on my tongue, and I spoke the text wrong in spite of myself, almost every time. I grew hot as a furnace; I perspired to my finger-ends; my face was like a beat; and when I came to that awful text I would make a great pause, fix my lips right, and then, to my intense mortifica- tion, say ‘A pot of message!’ I was in agony. Finally 1 ceased to try to pronounce it, but only said ‘my text’—pointing at it."—Rev. De Witt C. Talmage.