In 1874 Mr. Sims joined the staff of _Fun_, and about the same time he also became connected with the _Weekly Dispatch_, to which he communicated the humorous papers, entitled: “_Mary Jane’s Memoirs_.” Since 1877 he has written much in _The Referee_, over the pseudonym of “Dagonet,” and most of his Ballads, which have now a worldwide fame, first appeared in the columns of that journal. As a dramatic author Mr. Sims has also been both prolific and successful. “Crutch and Toothpick,” “Mother-in-Law,” “The Member for Slocum,” “The Gay City,” “The Half-Way House,” “The Lights o’ London,” “The Romany Rye,” and “The Merry Duchess,” are titles well-known to every modern play-goer. Judging by the vast amount of work in essays, dramas, and poems, produced by Mr. Sims, he must be possessed of extraordinary energy, powerful imagination, and of rapid composition. Some of his prose articles and ballads display an intimate knowledge of the inner life of the miserable, and the poor of London, such as could only have been acquired by one having keen powers of observation, after considerable time spent in the haunts of dirt, danger, and disease. In short, since Dickens left us, no writer has been so successful in this difficult and trying branch of literature, and Dickens himself was never so popular, nor were his works so widely read by the _people_ as are those of Mr. Sims. ―――― Although there is much that is both droll and humorous in his prose writings, the principal feature in his Ballads is homely pathos, of which the following poem is one of the best known examples. It is one of the _Ballads of Babylon_ (London. John P. Fuller, 1880), and is given by Mr. Sims’s kind permission:―― OSTLER JOE. I stood at eve, as the sun went down, by a grave where a woman lies, Who lured men’s souls to the shores of sin with the light of her wanton eyes, Who sang the song that the Siren sung on the treacherous Lurley height, Whose face was as fair as a summer day, and whose heart was as black as night. Yet a blossom I fain would pluck to-day from the garden above her dust; Not the languorous lily of soulless sin nor the blood-red rose of lust; But a sweet white blossom of holy love that grew in the one green spot In the arid desert of Phryne’s life, where all was parched and hot. * * * * * In the summer, when the meadows were aglow with blue and red, Joe, the ostler of the Magpie, and fair Annie Smith were wed. Plump was Annie, plump and pretty, with a cheek as white as snow; He was anything but handsome was the Magpie’s ostler, Joe. But he won the winsome lassie. They’d a cottage and a cow, And her matronhood sat lightly on the village beauty’s brow. Sped the months and came a baby――such a blue-eyed baby boy! Joe was working in the stables when they told him of his joy.