"'But, brother sinner, do explain How 'tis that you are not in pain; How is't that you can like a greyhound go, Merry as if nought had happened, burn ye?' 'Why,' cried the other, grinning, 'you must know That just before I ventured on my journey, To walk a little more at ease, _I took the liberty to boil my peas_!'" [Illustration: THE PILGRIM CHEAT.] LITTLE DAVY AGAIN. Sir Humphry Davy lived from 1778 to 1829. Coleridge said of him, "Had not Davy been the first chemist, he probably would have been the first poet of the age." He made some important chemical discoveries, overworked his body and brain, and took the pen "to amuse" and recreate himself, but too late, telling us of "the pleasures and advantages of fishing," etc. The following verses are from the poem of Dr. David Macbeth Moir, on the death of his darling little boy, who died at the age of five years:-- "Gem of our hearth, our household pride, Earth's undefiled, Could love have saved, thou hadst not died, Our dear, sweet child! Humbly we bow to Fate's decree; Yet had we hoped that time should see Thee mourn for us, not us for thee, Casa Wappy![9] "The nursery shows thy pictured wall, Thy bat, thy bow, Thy cloak, thy bonnet, club, and ball; But where art thou? A corner holds thine empty chair; Thy playthings, idly scattered there, But speak to us of our despair, Casa Wappy! "Yet 'tis a sweet balm to our despair, Fond, fairest boy, That heaven is God's, and thou art there, With him in joy! There past are death and all its woes, There beauty's stream forever flows, And pleasure's day no sunset knows, Casa Wappy!" "The sole purpose of poetry," says the author of the above beautiful poem, "is to delight and instruct; and no one can be either pleased or profited by what is unintelligible. Mysticism in law is quibbling; mysticism in religion is the jugglery of priestcraft; mysticism in medicine is quackery; and these often serve their crooked purposes well. But mysticism in poetry can have no attainable triumph." Again he says,-- "The finest poetry is that which is most patent to the general understanding, and hence to the approval or disapproval of the common sense of mankind." Dr. Moir enriched the pages of Blackwood's Magazine for thirty years with his beautiful poems, and occasional prose, which, according to Professor Wilson, "breathed the simplest and purest pathos." He practised medicine and surgery in his native village, six miles from Edinburgh, till the day of his death, which occurred in consequence of a wound caused by the upsetting of his carriage.