"Hi, stay!" the Bobby cried, "you man." Says he, "You'll catch me if you can." Three rapid strides, and he was gone; From Bobby's lips escaped a groan-- _Exitium_. At break of day, as in a fright, The Bobbies came from left and right, Each murmured, starting in a scare; A crash resounded through the air-- _Exitium_. There in the twilight cold and grey-- In ruins stately buildings lay, And o'er the land the news is spread: "Another Fenian escapade!" _Exitium_. _Scraps_, 14 May, 1884. * * * * * Use not the coke, the old man said, The stove must be by small coal fed. The heap of slack is deep and wide, But still their saucy voices cried, Don't bother us! _Printer's Devil_, Northampton, 1884. WHAT IS IN AN AIM. (_After "The Bridge."_) I went to bed at eleven, At the sign of the Azure Boar, And I knew that my room was seven, For I'd seen it upon the door. With a flickering, flaring candle, That glimmered like sickly Hope, I found out my way to the handle, And I flung the portal ope, When a gentleman--not to _my_ thinking-- Was placed in the door upright; It was evident he had been drinking, For he hiccuped out in the night; And he spoke in a language mighty, That rang through the chill and gloom; And he asked me, "Highty-tighty," "What the deuce do you do in my room?" And never of warning mildly A word had the stranger said, Ere he took up a bootjack wildly, And hurled it at my head; And down with a noise and clatter It fell o'er the winding stair, And some one cried, "What's the matter?" And I said, "I am not aware!" And whenever I feel dyspeptic, And whenever my soul's unwell, And whenever I've got lumbago, And whenever my eyelids swell, I see the man with the bootjack, He swears as he used to swear, And I hear the implement falling And clattering down the stair; And I say to myself at twilight, A vindictive person's a brute; I'd rather have been on the skylight Than down at the staircase foot! For whatever evil you suffer, The words of the sage rehearse, "Though things may be bad, you duffer, They might be a good deal worse." _The Story of a Railway Tavern_, by Professor Long, Fellow of the Learned Societies, contained in _Vere Vereker's Vengeance_, by Thomas Hood, 1865. * * * * * Reference was made, on page 80, to Edmund H. Yates's parody on _Evangeline_, it is to be found in "Mirth and Metre," by F. E. Smedley and E. H. Yates, 1855. It commences thus:-- PICNIC-ALINE.