Hear the loud alarm of bills―― Tailors’ bills―― What a tale of trousers and of coats whose volume fills Some dozen drawers. They might Make one scream out with affright―― Too hard up to pay this week; You can only speak, speak Through the door, In a pitiful appealing to the mercy of the dun, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and dirty dun. Bills get higher, higher, higher, And the parent’s wrath is dire; His son’s resolute endeavour Not now to pay nor ever, Making him scold and swear and roar. Oh the bills, bills, bills, Hardest far of human ills To remove! How they cram and crowd each drawer, What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating gov! Yet the ear it fully knows When one’s thinking, Or a drinking, When a dun comes up or goes; Yet the hand it fully fills Up a beaker, Getting weaker, And the beggar drinks and swills. But that drinking and that swilling gets one off some of the bills; Of the bills―― Of the bills, bills, bills, bills, Bills, bills, bills―― In the paying or delaying of the bills. _The Light Green_, Cambridge, 1872. ――――:o:―――― THE BELLS. BY AN OVERWORKED WAITER Hear the strangers pull the bells―― Tinkling bells! What voracious appetites their clattering foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, From morning until night, And the dishes seem to twinkle, As the gravies oversprinkle, With a crystalline delight; And they chime, chime, chime, As a shout from time to time, From “pottle-bodied” gourmands or animated swells, Is mingled with the ever-ringing bells―― Bells, bells, bells―― The tintinnabulation of the bells.