of delight
Fled away with the rapturous hours,
And when wisdom and wit, to enliven the night,
Scattered freely their fruits and their flowers.

When thy eloquence played round each topic in turn,
Shedding lustre and life where it fell,
As the sunlight, in which the tall mountain tops burn,
Paints each bud in the lowliest dell.

When that eye, before which the pale Senate once quailed
With humour and deviltry shone,
And the voice which the heart of the patriot hailed,
Had mirth in its every tone.

Then a health to thee, Tom: ev'ry bumper we drain
But renders thy image more dear,
As the bottle goes round, and again and again,
We wish, from our hearts, you were here.

SHEEPSKINS AND POLITICS

You know Uncle Tim; he was small, very small--not in stature, for he
was a six-footer, but small in mind and small in heart; his soul was no
bigger than a flea's. "Zeb, my boy," says he to me one day, "always be
neuter in elections. You can't get nothing by them but ill-will. Dear,
dear! I wish I had never voted. I never did but oncest, and, dear,
dear! I wish I had let that alone. There was an army doctor oncest,
Zeb, lived right opposite to me to Digby: dear, dear! he was a good
friend to me. He was very fond of wether mutton; and, when he killed a
sheep, he used to say to me, 'Friend Tim, I will give you the skin if
you will accept it.' Dear, dear! what a lot of them he gave me, first
and last! Well, oncest the doctor's son, Lawyer Williams, offered for
the town, and so did my brother-in-law, Phin Tucker; and, dear, dear! I
was in a proper fix. Well, the doctor axed me to vote for his son, and
I just up and told him I would, only my relation was candidating also;
but ginn him my hand and promise I would be neuter. Well, I told
brother-in-law the same, that I'd vote for him with pleasure, only my
old friend, the doctor's son, was offering too; and, therefore, gave
him my word also, I'd be neuter. And, oh, dear, dear! neuter I would
have remained too, if it hadn't a-been for them two electioneering
generals--devils, I might say--Lory Scott and Terry Todd. Dear, dear!
somehow or 'nother, they got hold of the story of the sheepskins, and
they gave me no peace day or night. 'What,' says they, 'are you going
to sell your country for a sheepskin?' The day of the election they
seized on me, one by one arm, and the other by the other, and lugged me