_Sleepy Sage (stirring, and muttering)._ When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is "February Fill-dyke." Hey! ho! B-RTL-Y-QUINCE B-WL-S the bellows-blower! AS-M-AD the State-tinker! WE-R the interrogative! Gad's my life! stolen away and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision! I have had a dream,--past the wit of man (as _Bottom_ and the G. O. M. both put it) to say what dream it was: man is but an ass if he go about to expound this (Irish) dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he offer to say what I had. Meseemed I was a sort of Hibernian _Titania_ enamoured of----But the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what I was enamoured of. I will get one of my young men to write a ballad of this Hibernian Midsummer-Madness Dream; it may well be called _Bottom's_ Dream, because it hath no bottom. It seemed to be suggested by, and to be set to, music of a music-hally sort, tripping but thunderous and thrasonic, and----(_rubs his eyes_). Hillo!!! (_To the three minstrels tuning up for another try._) Who in the name of Nox are _you_? I twig, I twig! Cacophony incarnate, Shindy in soot, triple-headed Cerberus of Row, I know you! Get out!!! Have I not had enough of you in town ever since February, but that you must impudently intrude upon my holiday quiet, my rural rest, my sea-side seclusion? _DON'T come unto these yellow sands, Corked mugs and hands! Hook it! You will not be missed. Off! off! well-hissed! Foot it featly anywhere, So I've not your burden here. Hark! hark!_ (Burden.) _Bow-wow!!!_ (_Dispersedly._) _'Tis Toby's bark!_ (Burden.) _Bow-wow!!!_ (_Dispersedly._) _Hark! Listen! Hear! Clear out, each cork-smudged Chanticleer! Get out, and leave me--DO!_ [_Exeunt Blameful Ethiopians ignominiously._ Sage _again composes himself to sleep._ * * * * * SAPPHICS ON TRAFFIC. (_A Lover of London to a Weary Would-be Wayfarer._) _Lover of London._ Would-be wayfarer! little think the proud ones Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-- Road, what hard work 'tis trying all day for Pimlico, Or Piccadilly. [Illustration] Tell me, wayfarer, how these Omnibuses, Growlers, and Hansoms, carts and vans of PICKFORD, Slithering slowly over the slippery asphalte, Manage a journey! Lingering loitering is not Locomotion! Trickling slow trailing through attenuate thoroughfares, Paroxysms of crawl and block alternate, Call you these Traffic! _Civic Would-be Wayfarer._