places And (with regard to the Mackays) made faces! Before those formidable frowns and scowls The dogs fled, tail-tucked, with affrighted howls, And horses, terrified, with flying feet O'erthrew the apple-stands along the street, Involving the metropolis in vast Financial ruin! Man himself, aghast, Retreated east and west and north and south Before the menace of that twisted mouth, Till Jove, in answer to their prayers, sent Night To veil the dreadful visage from their sight! Such were the causes of the horrid strife—   The mother-wrongs which nourished it to life. O, for a quill from an archangel's wing! O, for a voice that's adequate to sing The splendor and the terror of the fray, The scattered hair, the coat-tails all astray, The parted collars and the gouts of gore Reeking and smoking on the banker's floor, The interlocking limbs, embraces dire, Revolving bodies and deranged attire! Vain, vain the trial: 'tis vouchsafed to none To sing two millionaires rolled into one! My hand and pen their offices refuse, And hoarse and hoarser grows the weary muse. Alone remains, to tell of the event, Abandoned, lost and variously rent, The Bonynge nethermost habiliment. 

 

 A SONG IN PRAISE

   Hail, blessed Blunder! golden idol, hail!—   Clay-footed deity of all who fail. Celestial image, let thy glory shine, Thy feet concealing, but a lamp to mine. Let me, at seasons opportune and fit, By turns adore thee and by turns commit. In thy high service let me ever be   (Yet never serve thee as my critics me)   Happy and fallible, content to feel I blunder chiefly when to thee I kneel. But best felicity is his thy praise Who utters unaware in works and ways—   Who laborare est orare proves, And feels thy suasion wheresoe'er he moves, Serving thy purpose, not thine altar, still, And working, for he thinks it his, thy will. If such a life with blessings be not fraught, I envy Peter Robertson for naught. 

 

 A POET'S FATHER

   Welcker, I'm told, can boast a father great And honored in the service of the State. Public Instruction all his mind employs—   He guides its methods and its wage enjoys. Prime Pedagogue, imperious and grand, He waves his ferule o'er a studious land Where humming youth, intent upon the page, Thirsting for knowledge with a noble rage, Drink dry the whole Pierian spring and ask To slake their fervor at his private flask. Arrested by the terror of his frown, The 

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