rapidly approaching, for which occasion it may well be supposed he
was no better prepared than he should be. The faculty, however, were
indulgent, and had, moreover, even at that early day, hit upon the
happy expedient of awarding to every member of the graduating class an
honor of some sort, the delivery of an oration or a poem,--taking
especial care, by the way, to note in the _proces verbal_ of the
exercises that those students who were too poor to purchase, and too
stupid to manufacture, either the one or the other, had been excused
from taking the part assigned;--a convenient device, by which many a
deceived and doting parent has been adroitly blinded. It was in this
way that the faculty determined to dispose of the subject of this
memoir; and an Irish professor, who was an incontinent snuff-taker, and
sometimes a little mischievous withal, caused him to be announced for a
poem. Alike to the amusement and the astonishment of every body,
although he had no ear for numbers, and scarcely knew a dactyl from a
spondee, Daniel accepted the honor. Nor, after all, was he so much of a
fool as many people took him to be; and, whether by the process of
counting his fingers, or by some other means, I cannot say, but still I
have known him to bring out several stanzas of Hudibrastic metre,
sweetly rhyming "trees" with "breeze," "love" with "dove," "zephyr"
with "heifer," &c. Indeed I have likewise known him to be guilty of
positive waggery; but it must be confessed that in this line his
attempts were few and far between, and not always successful. He had
seen, however, that the professor, though not exactly poking fun at
him, had nevertheless intended a sly touch of irony upon his
proverbially prosing character. He therefore determined to "be up to
him," as the fancy have it; and having somewhere found the copy of an
obsolete satirical epic which an enamored snuff-taker had once
addressed to a mistress, who could reciprocate the interjection over
her snuff box,--

"Knows he the joys that my nose knows!"

Wheelwright copied it out, and presented it to the faculty as his own
composition. Being addicted to the use of the titillating powder
himself, it was but a reasonable supposition on his own part, that it
would give no offence. It commenced thus:--

Softly waft, ye southern breezes,
Bear my plaints to her I _love_--
Say to her whene'er she sneezes,
Sympathy my muscles _move_;

My true-love is fo