You’re sitting on your window-seat, Beneath a cloudless moon; Your hear a sound that seems to wear The semblance of a tune, As if a broken fife should strive To drown a cracked bassoon. And nearer, nearer still, the tide Of music seems to come; There’s something like a human voice, And something like a drum; You sit in speechless agony, Until your ear is numb. Poor “Home, sweet home” should seem to be A very dismal place; Your “Auld Acquaintance” all at once Is altered in the face; Their discords sting through Burns and Moore, Like hedgehogs dressed in lace. You think they are crusaders, sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of Sentiment, And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody, And break the legs of Time. But hark! the air again is still, The music all is ground, And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound; It cannot be,—it is,—it is,— A hat is going round! No! pay the dentist when he leaves A fracture in your jaw, And pay the owner of the bear That stunned you with his paw, And buy the lobster that has had Your knuckles in his claw; But, if you are a portly man, Put on your fiercest frown, And talk about a constable To turn them out of town; Then close your sentence with an oath, And shut the window down! And, if you are a slender man, Not big enough for that, Or if you cannot make a speech Because you are a flat, Go very quietly and drop A button in the hat! _Oliver Wendell Holmes._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _MISS CRUMP’S SONG._ MISS CRUMP was inexorable. She declared that she was entirely out of practice. “She scarcely ever touched the piano;” “Mamma was always scolding her for giving so much of her time to French and Italian, and neglecting her music and painting; but she told mamma the other day that it really was so irksome to her to quit Racine and Dante, and go to thrumming upon the piano, that, but for the obligations of filial obedience, she did not think she should ever touch it again.” Here Mrs. Crump was kind enough, by the merest accident in the world, to interpose, and to relieve the company from farther anxiety.