That you _can’t_, I submit, And the truth must be faced That the Force will get hit, And the town be disgraced, Till each Bobby with Billy――that’s Sikes, sir――on a more equal footing is placed. Are these shootings a dream? (I’m sarcastic, no doubt.) Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our wonderful whistle a failure, and are rattle and truncheon played out? _Funny Folks_, August 2, 1884. _Scribners’ Monthly_ for May, 1881, contained a humorous collection of imitations of various authors, entitled “Home, Sweet Home, with Variations.” It commences by giving a couple of verses from the original poem by John Howard Payne; next comes a variation such as might have been written by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Walt Whitman, Austin Dobson, Oliver Goldsmith, and Alexander Pope are also supposed each to contribute a new setting of the old song, the imitation of Walt Whitman is exquisitely humorous; but that which principally concerns us here is the third imitation, which is entitled:―― HOME, SWEET HOME as Mr. Francis Bret Harte might have woven it into a touching tale of a western gentleman in a red shirt―― Brown, o’ San Juan, Stranger, I’m Brown. Come up this mornin’ from ’Frisco―― Ben a-saltin’ my specie-stacks down. Ben a-knockin’ around, Fer a man from San Juan, Putty considable frequent―― Jes’ catch onter that streak o’ the dawn! Right thar lies my home―― Right thar in the red―― I could slop over, stranger, in po’try Would spread out old Shakspoke cold dead. Stranger, you freeze to this: there aint no kinder gin-palace, Nor no variety-show lays over a man’s own ranche. Maybe it hain’t no style, but the Queen in the Tower o’ London Aint got naathin’ I’d swop for that house over thar on the hill-side. Thar is my ole gal, ’n’ the kids, ’n’ the rest o’ my live-stock; Thar my Remington hangs, and thar there’s a griddle-cake br’ilin’ Fer the two of us, pard――and thar, I allow, the heavens Smile more friendly-like than on any other locality. Stranger, nowhere else I don’t take no satisfaction. Gimme my ranch, ’n’ them friendly old Shanghai chickens―― I brung the original pair f’m the States in eighteen-’n’-fifty―― Gimme them, and the feelin’ of solid domestic comfort. Yer parding, young man―― But this landscape a kind Er flickers――I ’low ’twuz the po’try―― I thought thet my eyes bed gone blind. * * * * *