When thy eloquence played round each topic in turn,

     Shedding lustre and life where it fell,

     As the sunlight, in which the tall mountain tops burn,

     Paints each bud in the lowliest dell.

     When that eye, before which the pale Senate once quailed

     With humour and deviltry shone,

     And the voice which the heart of the patriot hailed,

     Had mirth in its every tone.

     Then a health to thee, Tom: ev'ry bumper we drain

     But renders thy image more dear,

     As the bottle goes round, and again and again,

     We wish, from our hearts, you were here.

   SHEEPSKINS AND POLITICS

   You know Uncle Tim; he was small, very small—not in stature, for he was a six-footer, but small in mind and small in heart; his soul was no bigger than a flea's. "Zeb, my boy," says he to me one day, "always be neuter in elections. You can't get nothing by them but ill-will. Dear, dear! I wish I had never voted. I never did but oncest, and, dear, dear! I wish I had let that alone. There was an army doctor oncest, Zeb, lived right opposite to me to Digby: dear, dear! he was a good friend to me. He was very fond of wether mutton; and, when he killed a sheep, he used to say to me, 'Friend Tim, I will give you the skin if you will accept it.' Dear, dear! what a lot of them he gave me, first and last! Well, oncest the doctor's son, Lawyer Williams, offered for the town, and so did my brother-in-law, Phin Tucker; and, dear, dear! I was in a proper fix. Well, the doctor axed me to vote for his son, and I just up and told him I would, only my relation was candidating also; but ginn him my hand and promise I would be neuter. Well, I told brother-in-law the same, that I'd vote for him with pleasure, only my old friend, 

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