Through the clouds my way I'm winging, Angels to their harps are singing, Strains of unearthly sweetness lull me, And thrilling harmonies----"Yelp! Bow-wow-wow!" "Get out!"--"The dog has got me by the leg!" "Stave him off! Will you? See, he's rent my pants, My newest plaid!--Kick him!"--"Yow, yow!"--"This house I'll never serenade again!--A dog Should know musicians from suspicious chaps, And gentlemen from rowdies, even at night!" "Beat him again!" "No, no! Perhaps 't is HERS! A _lady's pet!_ Methinks the curtain moves! She's looking out! Let's sing once more! Just once!" "Not I.--I'll sing no more to-night!" and steps Limping unequally, and grumbling voice, Pass round the corner, and are heard no more. TO THE NEAR-SIGHTED. Purblind and short-sighted friends! You will listen to me,--_you_ will sympathize with me; for you know by painful experience what I mean when I say that we near-sighted people do not receive from our hawk-eyed neighbors that sympathy and consideration to which we are justly entitled. If we were blind, we should be abundantly pitied, but as we are only half-blind, such comments as these are all the consolation we get. "Oh! _near-sighted_, is she? Yes, it is very fashionable now-a-days for young ladies to carry eye-glasses, and call themselves near-sighted!" Or, "Pooh! It's all affectation. She can see as well as any body, if she chooses. She thinks it is pretty to half shut her eyes, and cut her acquaintances." I meet my friend A----, some morning, who returns my salutation with cold politeness, and says, "How cleverly you managed to cut me at the concert last night!" "At the concert! I did not see you." "O no! You could see well enough to bow to pretty Miss B----, and her handsome cousin; but as for seeing your old schoolmate, two seats behind her,--of course you are too near-sighted!" In vain I protest that I could not see her,--that three yards is a great distance to my eyes. She leaves me with an incredulous smile, and that most provoking phrase, "O yes! I _suppose_ so!" and distrusts me ever afterwards. Alas! we see just enough to seal our own condemnation. Who is free from this malady? As I look around in society, I see staring glassy ellipses on every side "in the place where eyes ought to grow,"--and perhaps most of the unfortunate owls get along very comfortably with their artificial eyes. But imagine a bashful youth, awkward and near-sighted, whose friends dissuade him from wearing glasses. Is there in the universe an individual more unlucky, more blundering, more sincerely to be pitied?