Saying, “Time, time, time! Owing money is a crime; It is robbing to have bills, To have bills, bills, bills; It is shocking to have bills!” Saying, “Time, time, time!” As he trills, trills, trills, To the growing of the bills―― Of the bills, bills, bills, To the growing of the bills―― Of the bills, bills, bills, bills, Bills, bills, bills―― To our groaning and our moaning o’er the bills. _Funny Folks_, January 25, 1879. ――――:o:―――― THE HOSE. Hear the ballad of the hose―― Stripèd hose. What a blissful wealth of plumpness they tenderly enclose! Naught you’ll find in ancient story Like those shapely symmetries. Solomon, in all his glory, Was not arrayed in one of these Dainty hose, hose, hose. Nothing can compare with those Striped with the crimson color of the fragrant-scented rose. Oh! those hose, hose, hose, hose, Hose, hose, hose―― Those softly rounded, garter-bounded hose. There’s a charm about those hose―― Silken hose―― Which, from an æsthetic standpoint, admiration will impose! And whene’er we chance to spy them, Then they seem our sole “Utopias,” And we feel we’d like to buy them―― Buy them filled, like Cornucopias―― Saucy hose, hose, hose. And the beauty they disclose―― How the eye of the beholder in entranced rapture glows On those hose, hose, hose, hose, Hose, hose, hose―― Those grace-enveloped, full-developed hose. You, by chance, may see those hose―― Well-filled hose―― Peeping from the mystic meshes of a labyrinth of clothes. Damsels dark and damsels fair, Each, mayhaps, displays a pair Of deftly-woven, parti-colored stockings, which more winsomely allure By the floral garniture Of their clockings. But the people-ah! the people―― They that dwell up in the steeple, Far from those: ’Mid the clanging and the rumble Of the bells――they never “tumble” To the hose. At that lofty elevation, They maintain their equipose, Suffering not the excitation Consequent on seeing those Shapely hose, hose, hose―― White as winter’s snows, Save the stripes, so richly tinted with the blushes of the rose, Are the hose, hose, hose, hose―― Those hose, hose―― Are the fascinating, aggravating hose. LUTIN. _Puck_, (New York), May 21, 1879.