commutation.    "He says that he's instructed to reply     (And he has so instructed me) that sin Like yours—and this poor gentleman's who's in For bad advice to you—comes rather high; But since, apparently, you both begin To feel some pious promptings to the right, And fain would turn your faces to the light, Eternity seems all too long a term. So 'tis commuted to one-half. I'm quite Prepared, when that expires, to free the worm And quench the fire." And, civilly retreating, He left them holding their protracted meeting. 

 

 A LIFTED FINGER

       [The Chronicle did a great public service in whipping       —— and his fellow-rascals out of office.—M.H. de Young's Newspaper.] 

   What! you whip rascals?—you, whose gutter blood Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood, Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs To serve a whole eternity of terms? You, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove? You, the De Young whose splendor bright and brave Is phosphorescence from another's grave—   Till now unknown, by any chance or luck, Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck? You whip a rascal out of office?—you Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew Its smoke in six directions to assert Your lack of appetite for others' dirt? Practice makes perfect: when for fame you thirst, Then whip a rascal. Whip a cripple first. Or, if for action you're less free than bold—   Your palms both brimming with dishonest gold—   Entrust the castigation that you've planned, As once before, to woman's idle hand. So in your spirit shall two pleasures join To slake the sacred thirst for blood and coin. Blood? Souls have blood, even as the body hath, And, spilled, 'twill fertilize the field of wrath. Lo! in a purple gorge of yonder hills, Where o'er a grave a bird its day-song stills, A woman's blood, through roses ever red, Mutely appeals for vengeance on your head. Slandered to death to serve a sordid end, She called you murderer and called me friend. Now, mark you, libeler, this course if you Dare to maintain, or rather to renew; If one short year's immunity has made You blink again the perils of your trade—   The ghastly sequence of the maddened "knave,"   The hot encounter and the colder grave; If the grim, dismal lesson you ignore While yet the stains are fresh upon your floor, And calmly march upon the fatal brink With eyes averted to your trail of ink, Counting unkind the services of those Who pull, to hold you back, your stupid nose, The day for you 

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