That night, alas! Pa Spriggins, in a solemn frame of mind, Betook himself to that small room, as oft he felt inclined, And he shut the door, and sat him down, those urns to contemplate, While appropriate reflections chased each other through his pate, For he loved to pensively recount the treasures of the past, And wondered constantly how long the family would last. The place was dark and gloomy--he was shut up there alone, When suddenly--his hair stood up!--he heard a hollow groan! The cover of the largest urn rose up a little way, A mist came forth, which altered to a figure dim and gray. It rose up from the ashes, like the Phenix known of old, But of such an awful bird as this the ancients never told. It bore a distant likeness to the figure of a man, But picture such a nondescript I know I never can. It had a gray old head upon the shoulders of a child; One eye was small and wicked, and the other large and wild. Its hands, its feet, its teeth, its ears, I solemnly declare, You couldn't pick out two of them that matched to make a pair! One foot was slim and dainty, and the other huge and flat, And it had a woman's wig on underneath a man's cocked hat; A waistcoat like George Washington's, a blazer and a train, That Spriggins knew had once belonged to his departed Jane! He sank upon his bonded knees, with terror quite unmanned; It stood upon its one large foot, and waved its biggest hand, And spake: "Unhappy man," it said, "for this have we been burned? For this have we been kept here long, so carefully inurned? Oh, see, upon this sacred shelf what dire confusion reigns! Wretch! What have you been doing with your ancestors' remains? You listen to your father's voice, but thanks, I fear, to you, It is your uncle Solomon whose mouth it's speaking through! Oh, tell me who or what I am, and how long I've been dead; And tell me if I've got my own or some one else's head; I don't belong to any special period at all. Am I my Aunt Kiziah, or am I your brother Paul? Oh, Spriggins--Ebenezer J!--Oh, wretch! Oh, fool! Oh, rash! How could you mix our ashes in one vast, ancestral hash?" Thus ending, with a mingled wail of misery and rage, That awful vision ceased to speak, and vanished from the stage, While ghostly groanings issued from the various urns around, But poor old Spriggins heard no more--he swooned upon the ground. * * * * * And now these mingled embers 'neath memorial marbles lie, And Spriggins and his family will be buried when they die. SOME MESSAGES RECEIVED BY TEACHERS IN BROOKLYN PUBLIC SCHOOLS The fact that the "Slab City" parents object to clay-modeling in the schools is illustrated in the following note sent to a teacher in one of the Tenth Ward schools: