A creature most frightful in feature and shape. His head was oblong and perfectly bald, Running back from his eyes--no forehead at all; His eyeballs were white, their sockets deep red; His long, glistening teeth strung with human-flesh shred, The gore of his victims from his fingers’ ends flowed; And round his lank limbs candescent chains glowed, In front of Miss “Taters” this creature was led; He gave a look, yelled, and fainted stone dead. “By my tongs,” quoth the Devil, “she’s rather too hard For the old fellow; she’ll make a capital guard. Take her down to the fire.” The imp led the way And far down they went from the clear light of day, Down, down, till the air was all smoky and red, Till the tumult of hell seemed bursting her head; Down, down, till the piteous wails and the moans Of the tortured but echoed the jeers and the groans Of the fiends. Down, down, till they came to the lake That scorches and scalds, but never will slake The thirst of its victims. Far out on its breast It would heave them anon on the red foaming crest Of a billow, then plunge them far deeper beneath Its boiling bosom, in torture to seethe. Along the hot shore the poor creatures would crawl, To pant and to rest from their terrible thrall. From their bodies all smoking the lava would stream, While the shriveled flesh peeled from each quiv’ring limb, And their heart-piercing shrieks rose higher and higher, As the tongue of each wave licked them back in the fire. But as soon as Miss “Taters” had come where they were Every noise was hushed, not a sound could you hear. ’Twas a wonder indeed, and the wonder increased, When the billows of crimson their torture surge ceased. When the imp had examined more closely, he found The victims had fainted, the fire gone down. He hurried her back to his master and said, “The fires are out, and the wretches are dead.” “What, the fires extinguished! those fires of old! Take her back! I begin e’en myself to feel cold! She’ll ruin us all with her terrible face; She’s rather hard-favored for even this place.” _April, 1867._ THE SUNFLOWER LINES SUGGESTED BY OBSERVING GEN. PETTIGREW’S NAME OMITTED IN MRS. DOWNING’S “MEMORIAL FLOWERS” AND IN THE “SOUTHERN BOUQUET” When poets cull memorial flowers, With which our martyrs’ graves to strew, They choose no one in Nature’s bowers For Pettigrew. Yet there is one, and only one, Which truly represents his name; A flower that revels in the sun, And drinks his flame. A flower that opens when, all red, The sun hath kissed the eastern skies; But westward turned, it droops its head And proudly dies.