Of all the notable things on earth,
The queerest one is pride of birth
Among our "fierce democracy"!
A bridge across a hundred years,
Without a prop to save it from sneers,
Not even a couple of rotten peers,
A thing for laughter, fleers, and jeers,
Is American aristocracy!

English and Irish, French and Spanish,
Germans, Italians, Dutch and Danish,
Crossing their veins until they vanish

In one conglomeration!

So subtle a tangle of blood, indeed,
No Heraldry Harvey will ever succeed
In finding the circulation.

Depend upon it, my snobbish friend,
Your family thread you can't ascend,
Without good reason to apprehend
You may find it waxed, at the farther end,
By some plebeian vocation!

Or, worse that that, your boasted line
May end in a loop of stronger twine,
That plagued some worthy relation!

JOHN G. SAXE.

And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar :

Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;

And I shall not deny

In regard to the same

What that name might imply;

But his smile it was pensive and childlike,

As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third,

And quite soft was the skies, Which it might be inferred

That Ah Sin was likewise :

Yet he played it that day upon William And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was euchre. The same

He did not understand;

But he smiled, as he sat by the table,
With the smile that was childlike and bland.

Yet the cards they were stocked

In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked

At the state of Nye's sleeve,

Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, And the same with intent to deceive.

But the hands that were played

By that heathen Chinee,

And the points that he made,

Were quite frightful to see

Till at last he put down a right bower, Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

Then I looked up at Nye,

And he gazed upon me; And he rose with a sigh,

And said, "Can this be?

We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor," And he went for that heathen Chinee.

In the scene that ensued

I did not take a hand,

But the floor it was strewed

Like the leaves on the strand

With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding In the game "he did not understand."

In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs —

Which was coming it strong,

Yet I state but the facts.

And we found on his nails, which were taper — What is frequent in tapers- that's wax.

BACHELOR'S HALL, what a comical place it is! Keep me from such all the days of my life! Sure but he knows what a burning disgrace it is, Never at all to be getting a wife.

See the old bachelor, gloomy and sad enough, Fussing around while he 's making his fire; His kettle has tipt up, och, honey, he 's mad enough, If he were present, to fight with the squire !

Pots, dishes, and pans, and such other commodities,

Ashes and praty-skins, kiver the floor; His cupboard a storehouse of comical oddities, Things never thought of as neighbors before. When his meal it is over, the table's left sittin' so; Dishes, take care of yourselves if you can; Devil a drop of hot water will visit ye.

Och, let him alone for a baste of a man!

Now, like a pig in a mortar-bed wallowing,
See the old bachelor kneading his dough;
Troth, if his bread he can ate without swallowing,
How it would help his digestion, ye know!
Late in the night, when he goes to bed shivering,
Never the bit is his bed made at all;
So he creeps like a terrapin under the kivering ; —
Bad luck to the pictur of Bachelor's Hall!

ANONYMOUS.

MR. MOLONY'S ACCOUNT OF THE BALL

GIVEN TO THE NEPAULESE AMBASSADOR BY THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL COMPANY.

O, WILL ye choose to hear the news?

Bedad, I cannot pass it o'er :

I'll tell you all about the ball

To the Naypaulase Ambassador. Begor! this fête all balls does bate,

At which I worn a pump, and I Must here relate the splendthor great Of th' Oriental Company.

These men of sinse dispoised expinse,

To fête these black Achilleses.
"We'll show the blacks," says they, "Almack's,
And take the rooms at Willis's."
With flags and shawls, for these Nepauls,
They hung the rooms of Willis up,

And decked the walls and stairs and halls
With roses and with lilies up.

And Jullien's band it tuck its stand

So sweetly in the middle there,
And soft bassoons played heavenly chunes,
And violins did fiddle there.

And when the Coort was tired of spoort,
I'd lave you, boys, to think there was

A nate buffet before them set,

Where lashins of good dhrink there was !

At ten before the ball-room door,
His moighty Excellency was;

He smoiled and bowed to all the crowd,
So gorgeous and immense he was.
His dusky shuit, sublime and mute,
Into the door-way followed him ;

And O the noise of the blackguard boys,
As they hurrood and hollowed him!

The noble Chair stud at the stair,

And bade the dthrums to thump; and he
Did thus evince to that Black Prince
The welcome of his Company.

O fair the girls, and rich the curls,

And bright the oys, you saw there, was;
And fixed each oye, ye there could spoi,
On Gineral Jung Bahawther was!

This Gineral great then tuck his sate, With all the other ginerals, (Bedad, his troat, his belt, his coat,

All bleezed with precious minerals ;) And as he there, with princely air,

Recloinin on his cushion was, All round about his royal chair,

The squeezin and the pushin was.

O Pat, such girls, such Jukes and Earls,
Such fashion and nobilitee!

Just think of Tim, and fancy him

Amidst the hoigh gentility!

There was Lord De L'Huys, and the Portygeese
Ministher and his lady there,

And I reckonized, with much surprise,
Our messmate, Bob O'Grady, there;

There was Baroness Brunow, that looked like Juno,
And Baroness Rehausen there,

And Countess Roullier, that looked peculiar
Well, in her robes of gauze in there.
There was Lord Crowhurst (I knew him first
When only Mr. Pips he was),
And Mick O'Toole, the great big fool,
That after supper tipsy was.

There was Lord Fingall and his ladies all,
And Lords Killeen and Dufferin,
And Paddy Fife, with his fat wife, —
I wondther how he could stuff her in.
There was Lord Belfast, that by me past,

And seemed to ask how should I go there? And the Widow Macrae, and Lord A. Hay, And the Marchioness of Sligo there.

Yes, Jukes and Earls, and diamonds and pearls,
And pretty girls, was spoorting there ;
And some beside (the rogues !) I spied,
Behind the windies, coorting there.

O, there's one I know, bedad, would show
As beautiful as any there;

And I'd like to hear the pipers blow,
And shake a fut with Fanny there!

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

IRISH ASTRONOMY.

A VERITABLE MYTH, TOUCHING THE CONSTELLATION
OF O'RYAN, IGNORANTLY AND FALSELY SPELLED ORION.

O'RYAN was a man of might
Whin Ireland was a nation,
But poachin' was his heart's delight
And constant occupation.

He had an ould militia gun,

And sartin sure his aim was;
He gave the keepers many a run,
And would n't mind the game laws.

St. Pathrick wanst was passin' by

O'Ryan's little houldin',

And, as the saint felt wake and dhry,

He thought he'd enther bould in.
"O'Ryan," says the saint, "avick!
To praich at Thurles I 'm goin';
So let me have a rasher quick,
And a dhrop of Innishowen."

"No rasher will I cook for you
While betther is to spare, sir,
But here's a jug of mountain dew,
And there's a rattlin' hare, sir."
St. Pathrick he looked mighty sweet,
And says he, Good luck attind you,
And when you're in your windin' sheet,
It's up to heaven I'll sind you."

SONG OF THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.

[This curious specimen of German scientific humor refers to the close of the Jurassic (or Liassic) period and the beginning of the Cretaceous, and describes the sad forebodings of a venerable Saurian, who sees in the degeneracy of the times a sign of the coming cataclysm.

The translator says. "Among the many extraordinary liberties which we have felt obliged to take with the letter of the original, in order to preserve as far as possible its spirit and its flowing movement, the most violent is the substitution in the last stanza but one, of an entirely new (and poor) joke for the very neat, but untranslatable jeu of the German. The last two lines of the stanza are: Sie kamen zu tief in die Kreide; Da war es natürlich vorbei.'

The literal meaning is, They got too deep in the chalk, and it was, of course, all up with them." The allusion is to the score chalked up by a landlord against some bibulous but impecunious customer; and the notion that the Saurians ran up so large an ac

count for drinks that the chalk required to mark their indebtedness

smothered the whole race, and brought on the Cretaceous or chalk period, is so absurdly funny that it is a pity to sacrifice it."]

THERE's a rustling in the rushes,
There's a flashing in the sea,

There's a tearful Ichthyosaurus

Swims hither mournfully!

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL.

A GEOLOGICAL ADdress.

["A human skull has been found in California, in the pltocene formation. This skull is the remnant, not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being. . . . . The skull was found in a shaft one hundred and fifty feet deep, two miles from Angel's, in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Matson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, and he gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey. . . . . The published volume of the State Survey on the Geology of California states that man existed contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist." Daily Paper.]

"SPEAK, Oman, less recent! Fragmentary fossil! Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,

Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum

Of Volcanic tufa!

Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium;
Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogamia;
Older than the hills, those infant eruptions
Of earth's epidermis !

THE JOVIAL BEGGAR.

Eo-Mio- Plio-whatsoe'er the "cene" was That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,

Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,
Tell us thy strange story!

Or has the Professor slightly antedated
By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,
Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted
For cold-blooded creatures?

Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest When above thy head the stately Sigillaria Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant

THERE was a jovial beggar,

He had a wooden leg;
Lame from his cradle,
And forced for to beg.
And a-begging we will go,
Will go, will go,
And a-begging we will go.

A bag for his oatmeal,
Another for his salt,

And a long pair of crutches,
To show that he can halt.

And a-begging we will go, etc.

A bag for his wheat,
Another for his rye,

And a little bottle by his side,

To drink when he's a-dry.
And a-begging we will go, etc.

Seven years I begged

For my old master Wilde; He taught me how to beg When I was but a child. And a-begging we will go, etc.

I begged for my master,

And got him store of pelf; But, goodness now be praised! I'm begging for myself.

And a-begging we will go, etc.