It is now the proper time for the cross-eyed woman to fool with the garden hose. I have faced death in almost every form, and I do not know what fear is, but when a woman with one eye gazing into the zodiac and the other peering into the middle of next week, and wearing one of those floppy sun-bonnets, picks up the nozzle of the garden hose and turns on the full force of the institution, I fly wildly to the Mountains of Hepsidam. Water won't hurt any one, of course, if care is used not to forget and drink any of it, but it is this horrible suspense and uncertainty about facing the nozzle of a garden hose in the hands of a cross-eyed woman that unnerves and paralyzes me. Instantaneous death is nothing to me. I am as cool and collected where leaden rain and iron hail are thickest as I would be in my own office writing the obituary of the man who steals my jokes. But I hate to be drowned slowly in my good clothes and on dry land, and have my dying gaze rest on a woman whose ravishing beauty would drive a narrow-gage mule into convulsions and make him hate himself t'death. BILL NYE. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THE COURTIN' God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten. Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'Ith no one nigh to hender. A fireplace filled the room's one side With half a cord o' wood in-- There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) To bake ye to a puddin'. The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out Toward the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle flames danced about The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's-arm thet Gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'. 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look On sech a blessed cretur, A dogrose blushin' to a brook Ain't modester nor sweeter. He was six foot o' man, A 1, Clear grit an' human natur'; None couldn't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter. He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, He'd squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells-- All is, he couldn't love 'em. But long o' her his veins 'ould run All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed felt full o' sun Ez a south slope in Ap'il. She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, She _knowed_ the Lord was nigher.