As childish incidents recurred In memory to Dad McGuire, As one who neither saw nor heard He sat, intent upon the fire; Yet watched the ever-changing blaze With that intensity of gaze Which shows the things the eyes have caught Are not the subjects of the thought, But far beyond their metes and bounds The vision rests on other grounds. This story of a life rehearsed, Left other eyes bedimmed and blurred; Each with his silent thoughts conversed And none presumed to speak a word, Lest sympathy the tears provoke. Old Uncle Jim forgot to smoke And though he had replenished it, Still left his meerschaum pipe unlit, Till as the watchdog suddenly Wakes up with apprehensive sniff, He started from his reverie And took an unsuccessful whiff; But embers which the fire supplied Soon changed the fragrant charge inside With alternating draw and whiff, Into a meerschaum Teneriffe. All smoked, excepting Dad McGuire, Who stirred the embers of the fire, And placed thereon what seemed to be, The remnants of a hemlock tree; 'Twas one of those ungainly stumps, Composed of twisted knots and bumps, Which every boy or even man, In chopping wood, skips if he can; 'Twas such a chunk as may be seen After the woodpile's chopped up clean; The log they split the blocks upon And leave when all the rest is gone. This chunk, which none of them could split, Though many had attempted it, By divers and ingenious ways, Was soon enveloped in a blaze, Which shed its glare into the night, As beacons radiate their light. Reclining by his brother's side, Abstracted and preoccupied, The Russian, rubicund and hale, Was importuned to tell his tale, And slightly coughing from the smoke, Forthwith in faultless diction spoke: "My brother's story you have heard, The same should mine be, word for word, Up to that dismal dungeon grate, Which he presumed had sealed my fate. I doubt not he related well The horrors of that loathsome cell, So that description, now by me, Would fruitless repetition be. Sufficient be it to declare That brief was my detention there.