Your solids in a liquid state, Your cooling liquids heated, And every promised joy by Fate Most fatally defeated: All, save the serving-men, are soured, _They_ smirk, the cunning sinners! Having, before they came, devoured Most comfortable dinners. Still you assume, in very spite, A grim and gloomy gladness; Pretend to laugh--affect delight-- And scorn all show of sadness While thus you smile, but storm within, A storm without comes faster, And down descends in deafening din A deluge of disaster! So, friend, if you are sick of _Home_, Wanting a new sensation, And sigh for the unwonted ease Of un-accommodation; If you would taste, as amateur, And vagabond beginner, The painful pleasures of the poor, _Get up a Pic-Nic Dinner_! * * * * * There is a good deal of talk, in these latter days, about the article of guano: the right of discovery of the islands where it is obtained, and the like. We remember to have heard something about the discovery and occupation of the first of these islands, that of Ichaboe, which made us "laugh consumedly;" and we have been thinking that a thorough exploration of the Lobos islands might result in a similar discomfiture to the "grasping Britishers." It seems that a party of Englishmen, claiming to have discovered the island of Ichaboe, landed from a British vessel upon that "rich" coast, and appreciating the great agricultural value of its minerals, walked up toward the top of the heap, to crow on their own dung-hill, and take possession of it in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, with the usual form of breaking a bottle of Madeira, and other the like observances. While they were thus taking possession, however, one of the party, more adventurous than the rest, made his way to the farther slope of a higher eminence, and saw, to his utter discomfiture and consternation, a Bangor schooner rocking in a little cove of the island, a parcel of Yankees digging into its sides, and loading the vessel, and a weazen-faced man administering the temperance-pledge to a group of the natives on a side-hill near by! He went back to his party, reported what he had seen, and the ceremony of taking possession, in the name of Her Majesty, of an uninhabited island, was very suddenly interrupted and altogether done away with. * * * * * The readers of "The Drawer," who may have noticed the numerous signs of _Ladies' Schools_ which may be seen in the suburban streets and thoroughfares of our Atlantic cities, will find the following experience of a Frenchman in London not a little amusing: