poet made his appearance at the proper
hour, like any ordinary mortal, and acquitted himself with such
rhythmical eloquence, such keen, silvery humor, as brought the
house down, and himself _vice versa_.

The audience having dispersed in a state like the afflatus of
laughing-gas, the poet and a privileged clique proceeded to the
house of the Baptist elder, to prolong the night with metaphysical
wassail. From the froth of poetry, they rose to a contemplation of
the old classics; Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, rising
grandly from their dust, ensphered in vibratory eloquence.

The elder, whose, education had been accomplished simply by a New
Testament and three-inch rope, sat, or rather twisted through the
rhapsody, as a dunce twists through his Greek roots, and at the
first pause, drawing himself erect with the self-complacent air of
a man who applies the clincher, ejaculated, with the Western
twang: 'What do you think of Hi-awa_thy_?' The professor, giving
him one look, to be sure of his sanity, and a second to be sure of
his obtusity, answered gravely, above a convulsion of laughter:
'Hi-awathy was a genius!'

Athens has since then grown to be some town, with an aristocracy
composed of a few old maids, who attain the distinction from being
the oldest inhabitants, and a poet of its own. The latter has
immortalized himself by a poem in the Chatterton obsolete style,
on 'Ye Cobwebs in my Attick,' supposed to be an 'Allegory on my
Brain,' and from having once astonished one of the very _elite_ of
the aristocracy by requesting her to lend him her book, 'On the
Dogs of Venice.' Her ladyship assured him that she was not in
possession of the volume; but, on his insisting, conducted him to
her library, (six shelves, one and a half by four,) where he
seized upon a moth-eaten volume, illustrated on the front page by
a man of obesity, clad in very flowing robes, and an immense
crown, in the act of casting a ring into a black little stream
ornamented by six rushes and two swans, with this inscription
beneath: 'Venice wedding the Adriatic through the person of her
Doge.' A wit having suggested to this votary of the muse that he
should compose an epic on the royal canine of Venice, he is now
zealously devoting himself to the task, as the literary public are
respectfully invited to