Quickly to my feet I scrambled, and across the yard I ambled. As I heard that bull-dog coming, bent on tasting human gore. Soon he seized me by the breeches, and I gave some awful screeches, As the entire seat in fragments from my Sunday pants he tore. With my right hand lifted skyward, “I will kill that dog!” I swore. This I said, and nothing more. Soon the dog his grip releases, and from chasing me he ceases While he stopped to chew the pieces that he from my breeches tore. Once across my shoulder glancing, with the moonlight o’er him dancing, I espied the old man prancing like a madman in the door, And I muttered, “Men like you should be slaughtered by the score, And you’ll raise the count one more.” While the broadcloth Bull was chewing, I my way was still pursuing, And I soon, quite tired and panting, lay upon my cottage floor. Then I cursed my Mary’s daddy, and I called him an old paddy, And I swore I’d whip the laddy till my pardon he’d implore. But she’s lost to me for ever, the dear girl whom I adore, Ay, for ever――evermore. ANONYMOUS. ―――――――― THE PHANTOM CAT. On the ocean swiftly sailing, with the western daylight failing, And a fair south-wester with us, scudding o’er the waters blue, O’er the bulwarks I was leaning, and my eyes my hand was screening; For I wish’d to learn the meaning of a strange sail now in view, Of a vessel in the offing, coming slowly into view. I had little else to do. * * * * * And all thought, with expectation, what the country, what the nation, Might the stranger vessel hail from, sailing slowly through the night; For a landsman has no notion of the sailor’s heart’s emotion When he hears upon the ocean that a vessel heaves in sight, Like an old friend coming to him, is a ship that heaves in sight, With her sails so broad and white. * * * * * Scarcely had the sailor spoken, when the evening air was broken By a blast from speaking-trumpet: “Ship ahoy! what cheer, what cheer? We’ve been sailing, three years sailing, round about the Horn a-whaling. Food is scarce and water failing――stranger, spare a trifle here―― Biscuit, grog, and cask of water; just a trifle, stranger, here; You’ll be paid back never fear.” Skipper says, “We can afford, man, if you only come on board, man, Two or three good casks of water, one of biscuit, one of ale. Shove the boat off; I’m delighted, such a vessel to have sighted, From the mighty States United; come and taste a glass of ale; Come and chat for half an hour o’er the friendly glass of ale I take nightly without fail.”