What _had_ I been reading? The _Standard_: “Double Bigamy;” “Speech of the Mayor.” And later—eh? yes! I meandered Through some chapters of Vanity Fair. How it fuses the grave with the festive! Yet e’en there, there is nothing so fine— So playfully, subtly suggestive— As that joke of mine. Did it hinge upon “parting asunder?” No, I don’t part my hair with my brush. Was the point of it “hair?” Now I wonder! Stop a bit—I shall think of it—hush! There’s _hare_, a wild animal—Stuff! It was something a deal more recondite: Of that I am certain enough; And of nothing beyond it. Hair—_locks_! There are probably many Good things to be said about those. Give me time—that’s the best guess of any— “Lock” has several meanings, one knows. Iron locks—_iron-gray locks_—a “deadlock”— That would set up an everyday wit: Then of course there’s the obvious “wedlock;” But that wasn’t it. No! mine was a joke for the ages; Full of intricate meaning and pith; A feast for your scholars and sages— How it would have rejoiced Sidney Smith! ’Tis such thoughts that ennoble a mortal; And, singing him out from the herd, Fling wide immortality’s portal— But what was the word? Ah me! ’tis a bootless endeavour. As the flight of a bird of the air Is the flight of a joke—you will never See the same one again, you may swear. ’Twas my firstborn, and O how I prized it! My darling, my treasure, my own! This brain and none other devised it— And now it has flown. ON THE BEACH. LINES BY A PRIVATE TUTOR. WHEN the young Augustus Edward Has reluctantly gone bedward (He’s the urchin I am privileged to teach), From my left-hand waistcoat pocket I extract a batter’d locket And I commune with it, walking on the beach. I had often yearn’d for something That would love me, e’en a dumb thing; But such happiness seem’d always out of reach: Little boys are off like arrows With their little spades and barrows, When they see me bearing down upon the beach; And although I’m rather handsome, Tiny babes, when I would dance ’em On my arm, set up so horrible a screech That I pitch them to their nurses With (I fear me) mutter’d curses, And resume my lucubrations on the beach. And the rabbits won’t come nigh me, And the gulls observe and fly me, And I doubt, upon my honour, if a leech Would stick on me as on others, And I know if I had brothers They would cut me when we met upon the beach. So at last I bought this trinket. For (although I love to think it) ’Twasn’t _given_ me, with a pretty little speech: No! I bought it of a pedlar, Brown and wizen’d as a medlar, Who was hawking odds and ends about the beach.