“The heavenly bodies!” echoed John, “Ahem!” His mind still full of famishing alarms, “’Zooks, if your Honour sups with _them_, In helping, somebody must make long arms!” He thought his master’s stomach was in danger, But still in the same tone replied the Knight, “Go down, John, go, I have no appetite; Say I’m engaged with a celestial stranger.”-- Quoth John, not much au fait in such affairs, “Wouldn’t the stranger take a bit down stairs?” “No,” said the master, smiling, and no wonder, At such a blunder, “The stranger is not quite the thing you think, He wants no meat or drink, And one may doubt quite reasonably whether He has a mouth, Seeing his head and tail are joined together. Behold him,--there he is, John, in the South.” John look’d up with his portentous eyes, Each rolling like a marble in its socket. At last the fiery tad-pole spies, And, full of Vauxhall reminiscence, cries, “A rare good rocket!” “A what! A rocket, John! Far from it! What you behold, John, is a comet; One of those most eccentric things That in all ages Have puzzled sages And frighten’d kings; With fear of change that flaming meteor, John, Perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range”-- “Do he?” cried John; “Well, let him flare on, _I_ haven’t got no sovereigns to change!” [Illustration: THE HARVEST MOON.] LITERARY REMINISCENCES. No. III.