To flatter your way to the goad of your hope, O plausible Mr. Perkins, You'll need ten tons of the softest soap And butter a thousand firkins. The soap you could put to a better use In washing your hands of ambition Ere the butter's used for cooking your goose To a beautiful brown condition. * * * * * "The Railroad can't run Stanford." That is so-- The tail can't curl the pig; but then, you know, Inside the vegetable-garden's pale The pig will eat more cabbage than the tail. * * * * * When Sargent struts by all the lawmakers say: "Right--left!" It is fair to infer The right will get left, nor polar the day When he makes that thing to occur. Not so, not so, 'tis a joke, that cry-- Foolish and dull and small: He so bores them for votes that they mean to imply He's a drill-Sargent, that is all. * * * * * Gods! what a sight! Astride McClure's broad back Estee jogs round the Senatorial track, The crowd all undecided, as they pass, Whether to cheer the man or cheer the ass. They stop: the man to lower his feet is seen And the tired beast, withdrawing from between, Mounts, as they start again, the biped's neck, And scarce the crowd can say which one's on deck. A GROWLER Judge Shafter, you're an aged man, I know, And learned too, I doubt not, in the law; And a head white with many a winter's snow (I wish, however that your heart would thaw) Claims reverence and honor; but the jaw That's always wagging with a word malign, Nagging and scolding every one in sight As harshly as a jaybird in a pine, And with as little sense of wrong and right As animates that irritable creature, Is not a very venerable feature. You damn all witnesses, all jurors too (And swear at the attorneys, I suppose, But _that's_ commendable) "till all is blue"; And what it's all about, the good Lord knows, Not you; but all the hotter, fiercer glows Your wrath for that--as dogs the louder howl With only moonshine to incite their rage, And bears with more ferocious menace growl, Even when their food is flung into the cage. Reform, your Honor, and forbear to curse us. Lest all men, hearing you, cry: "_Ecce ursus_!" AD MOODIUM Tut! Moody, do not try to show To gentlemen and ladies That if they have not "Faith," they'll go Headlong to Hades. Faith is belief; and how can I Have that by being willing? This dime I cannot, though I try, Believe a shilling. Perhaps you can. If so, pray do-- Believe you own it, also. But what seems evidence to you I may not call so. Heaven knows I'd like the Faith to think This little vessel's contents Are liquid gold. I see 'tis ink For writing nonsense. Minds prone to Faith, however, may Come now and then to sorrow: They put their trust in truth to-day, In lies to-morrow.