“Nigger,” said I, “horrid demon! _Nigger still if slave or freeman_, Pause and ponder ere you answer this one question, I implore: Have you got no sense of feeling? do you mean to live by stealing? Or by working and fair dealing; tell me truly, I implore, On your honour as a nigger, will you ever labour more? Plough in corn or hoe in cotton, as you did in days of yore?” Quoth the Nigger――“Nevermore!” Startled by the stillness broken by reply so flatly spoken, “Doubtless,” said I, “this big nigger once could eat enough for four, When on some grand rice plantation, he could out-eat all creation, Until his corporal situation warned him he could eat no more; Scorning any calculation of how much cash it cost I’m sure, For the master paid the piper in the good old days of yore, Days he’ll revel in no more!” “Nigger,” said I, “thing of evil! quit my sight! _go to the devil!_ Or even yet, pause, reconsider terms I’ll offer you no more, Tell me truly, I implore you, for the last time I conjure you, If good wages I ensure you, and clothes the best you ever wore, Will you work three days in seven, at tasks far lighter than of yore? Only three short days in seven――labour light and payment sure?” Quoth the nigger――“Work no more.” “Be that word our sign of parting, nigger man,” I said upstarting, “Get you gone to where you came from, let me see your face no more. Quick, vamose, cut dirt――skedaddle――seek some far-off, distant shore, Haste, relieve me of that visage――_darken_ not again my door, Join the army――go to Texas! Never come back here to vex us, Take your gaze from off my victuals――take your carcase from my door”―― Quoth the nigger――“Nevermore.” And the nigger, never working, still is shirking――still is shirking Every kind of honest labour, in the house or out of door, And his eye has all the seeming of a vulture’s starved and dreaming, And my bacon, gently steaming tempts him still to cross my floor. But I’ll gamble with that poker that I hurled at him before, That I’ll maul his very lights out, if he dares to pass that door, He _shall_ work or――eat no more! _The Figaro_, February 16, 1876. ―――――――― COWGATE PHILANTHROPY. Once, while in the Cowgate dirty, on an evening damp and murky, Mournfully I gazed at objects swarming there from door to door, From a whisky palace, swearing, a poor woman issued, bearing A child upon her bosom bare, and that bosom stained with gore, And she uttered dreadful threats against the man that kept the store―― Idle threats, and nothing more.