Rippling Rhymes
 

 GUESS WHO! 

 He is the press and the people, the sultan who rules the Turks; he is the bell in the steeple, and he is the whole blamed works. He is the hill and valley, the dawning, the dusk, the moon; he is the large white alley, he is the man in the moon. He is the soothing slumber, he is the soul awake, he is the big cucumber, that gives us the bellyache. He is the fire that quickens, the company that insures; he is the ill that sickens, and he is the thing that cures. He is the ruling Russian, and we are the groveling skates; he is the constitution, and he's the United States. 

 

 

 TRYING AGAIN 

 No boarding house, tavern or inn was in sight; so into a cavern went Bruce, in sore plight. By enemies hunted, a price on his head, and all his schemes shunted, he wished he was dead.  "In vain my endeavor, repulsed my demands; I'll try again never—I throw up my hands!"  And so he lay sighing and cussing his fate, and wished he was lying stone dead in a crate. A spider was spinning its web by the wall; now losing, now winning, now taking a fall; though often it tumbled, it breathed not a sob, nor crawfished nor grumbled, but stuck to its job. Then Bruce opened wider his eyes and exclaimed:  "That dodgasted spider has made me ashamed! I'm but a four-flusher to sit here and whine! This morning must usher in triumphs of mine!" 

 He canned all his wailing and cut out the frown, and went forth a-smiling, and won a large crown! 

 And legions of fellows with tears in their eyes, who wear out their bellows with groaning and sighs, who think they are goners, ordained to the dump, would harvest some honors if they would just hump! The spiders are teaching, the same as of old; the spiders are preaching a gospel of gold: "Though baffled and broken, O children of men, let grief be unspoken—go at it again!" 

 

 

 ICONOCLASM 

 King Skeptic wears his modern crown, his stern, destructive law prevails; he's tearing all our idols down, disproving all our fav'rite tales. Is there a legend you hold dear, some legend of the long ago? King Skeptic hears it with a sneer, and digs up history to show that things of that sort never chanced, and never could, and never will. "We have," he says, "so much advanced, that fairy tales don't fill 
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