wealth is such A golden truth or two don't count for much. You say that you've no patience with such stuff As by Rinan is writ, and when you read   (Why do you read?) have hardly strength enough To hold your hand from flinging the vile screed Into the fire. That were a wasteful deed Which you'd repent in sackcloth extra rough; For books cost money, and I'm told you care To lay up treasures Here as well as There. I fear, good, pious soul, that you mistake Your thrift for toleration. Never mind:   Rinan in any case would hardly break His great, strong, charitable heart to find The bats and owls of your myopic kind Pained by the light that his ideas make.   'Tis Truth's best purpose to shine in at holes Where cower the Kembles, to confound their souls! 

 

 A WORD TO THE UNWISE

       [Charles Main, of the firm of Main & Winchester, has ordered a grand mausoleum for his plot in Mountain View Cemetery.—City Newspaper.] 

   Charles Main, of Main & Winchester, attend With friendly ear the chit-chat of a friend Who knows you not, yet knows that you and he Travel two roads that have a common end. We journey forward through the time allowed, I humbly bending, you erect and proud. Our heads alike will stable soon the worm—   The one that's lifted, and the one that's bowed. You in your mausoleum shall repose, I where it pleases Him who sleep bestows; What matter whether one so little worth Shall stain the marble or shall feed the rose? Charles Main, I had a friend who died one day. A metal casket held his honored clay. Of cyclopean architecture stood The splendid vault where he was laid away. A dozen years, and lo! the roots of grass Had burst asunder all the joints; the brass, The gilded ornaments, the carven stones Lay tumbled all together in a mass. A dozen years! That taxes your belief. Make it a thousand if the time's too brief.     'Twill be the same to you; when you are dead You cannot even count your days of grief. Suppose a pompous monument you raise Till on its peak the solar splendor blaze While yet about its base the night is black; But will it give your glory length of days? Say, when beneath your rubbish has been thrown, Some rogue to reputation all unknown—     Men's backs being turned—should lift his thieving hand, Efface your name and substitute his own. Whose then would be the monument? To whom Would be the fame? Forgotten in your gloom, Your very name forgotten—ah, my friend, The name is all that's rescued by the 

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