_(Enter Smyler.)_ Flung like a doom athwart--ha!--thou? Portentous presence, art thou not the same That stalks with aspect horrible among Small youths and maidens, baring snaggy teeth, Champing their tender limbs till crimson spume, Flung from, thy lips in cursing God and man, Incarnadines the land? SMYLER: Thou dammid slut! _(Exit Smyler.)_ NELLIBRAC: O what a pretty man! SARALTHIA Now who is next? Of tramps and casuals this graveyard seems Prolific to a fault! _(Enter Needleson, exhaling, prophetically, an odor of decayed eggs and, actually, one of unlaundried linen. He darts an intense regard at an adjacent marble angel and places his open hand behind his ear.)_ NEEDLESON: Hay? _(Exit Needleson.)_ NELLIBRAC: Sweet, sweet male! I yearn to play at Copenhagen with him! _(Blushes diligently and energetically.)_ CHORUS OF SKULLS: Hoodoos, hoodoos, disappear-- Some dread deity draws near! _(Exeunt Hoodos.)_ Smitten with a sense of doom, The dead are cowering in the tomb, Seas are calling, stars are falling And appalling is the gloom! Fragmentary flames are flung Through the air the trees among! Lo! each hill inclines its head-- Earth is bending 'neath his thread! _(On the contrary, enter Villiam on a chip, navigating an odor of mignonette. Saralthia springs forward to put him in her pocket, but he is instantly retracted by an invisible string. She falls headlong, breaking her heart. Reënter Villiam, Needleson, Smyler. All gather about Saralthia, who loudly laments her accident. The Spirit of Tar-and Feathers, rising like a black smoke in their midst, executes a monstrous wink of graphic and vivid significance, then contemplates them with an obviously baptismal intention. The cross on Lone Mountain takes fire, splendoring the Peninsula. Tableau. Curtain.)_ ON STONE _As in a dream, strange epitaphs I see, Inscribed on yet unquarried stone, Where wither flowers yet unstrown-- The Campo Santo of the time to be_. A WREATH OF IMMORTELLES * * * * * LORING PICKERING _(After Pope)_ Here rests a writer, great but not immense, Born destitute of feeling and of sense. No power he but o'er his brain desired-- How not to suffer it to be inspired. Ideas unto him were all unknown, Proud of the words which, only, were his own. So unreflecting, so confused his mind, Torpid in error, indolently blind, A fever Heaven, to quicken him, applied, But, rather than revive, the sluggard died. * * * * * A WATER-PIRATE