“Come, POLTER,” said the fiend, “begin, And keep the bowl a-flowing on— A working man needs pints of gin To keep his clockwork going on.” BOB shuddered: “Ah, you’ve made a miss If you take me for one of you: You filthy beast, get out of this— BOB POLTER don’t wan’t none of you.” The demon gave a drunken shriek, And crept away in stealthiness, And lo! instead, a person sleek, Who seemed to burst with healthiness. “In me, as your adviser hints, Of Abstinence you’ve got a type— Of MR. TWEEDIE’S pretty prints I am the happy prototype. “If you abjure the social toast, And pipes, and such frivolities, You possibly some day may boast My prepossessing qualities!” BOB rubbed his eyes, and made ’em blink: “You almost make me tremble, you! If I abjure fermented drink, Shall I, indeed, resemble you? “And will my whiskers curl so tight? My cheeks grow smug and muttony? My face become so red and white? My coat so blue and buttony? “Will trousers, such as yours, array Extremities inferior? Will chubbiness assert its sway All over my exterior? “In this, my unenlightened state, To work in heavy boots I comes; Will pumps henceforward decorate My tiddle toddle tootsicums? “And shall I get so plump and fresh, And look no longer seedily? My skin will henceforth fit my flesh So tightly and so TWEEDIE-ly?” The phantom said, “You’ll have all this, You’ll know no kind of huffiness, Your life will be one chubby bliss, One long unruffled puffiness!” “Be off!” said irritated BOB. “Why come you here to bother one? You pharisaical old snob, You’re wuss almost than t’other one! “I takes my pipe—I takes my pot, And drunk I’m never seen to be: I’m no teetotaller or sot, And as I am I mean to be!” THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB. STRIKE the concertina’s melancholy string! Blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything! Let the piano’s martial blast Rouse the Echoes of the Past, For of AGIB, PRINCE OF TARTARY, I sing! Of AGIB, who, amid Tartaric scenes, Wrote a lot of ballet music in his teens: His gentle spirit rolls In the melody of souls— Which is pretty, but I don’t know what it means. Of AGIB, who could readily, at sight, Strum a march upon the loud Theodolite. He would diligently play On the Zoetrope all day, And blow the gay Pantechnicon all night. One winter—I am shaky in my dates— Came two starving Tartar minstrels to his gates; Oh, ALLAH be obeyed, How infernally they played! I remember that they called themselves the “Oüaits.”