Since first you took to drinking;
I mean in Nature's milky way
Of course no ill I'm thinking.

But while on life's uneven road
Your track you've been pursuing,
What fountains from your wit have flowed
What drinks you have been brewing!

I know whence all your magic came,
Your secret I've discovered,
The source that fed your inward flame,
The dreams that round you hovered.

Before you learned to bite or munch,
Still kicking in your cradle,
The Muses mixed a bowl of punch
And Hebe seized the ladle.

Dear babe, whose fiftieth year to-day
Your ripe half-century rounded,
Your books the precious draught betray
The laughing Nine compounded.

So mixed the sweet, the sharp, the strong,
Each finds its faults amended,
The virtues that to each belong
In happiest union blended.

And what the flavor can surpass
Of sugar, spirit, lemons?
So while one health fills every glass
Mark Twain for Baby Clemens!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Frank R. Stockton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Joel Chandler Harris sent
pleasing letters. Warner said:

You may think it an easy thing to be fifty years old, but you will
find it's not so easy to stay there, and your next fifty years will
slip away much faster than those just accomplished.

Many wrote letters privately, of course, and Andrew Lang, like Holmes,
sent a poem that has a special charm.

FOR MARK TWAIN

To brave Mark Twain, across the sea,
The years have brought his jubilee.
One hears it, half in pain,
That fifty years have passed and gone
Since danced the merry star that shone
Above the babe Mark Twain.

We turn his pages and we see
The Mississippi flowing free;
We turn again and grin
O'er all Tom Sawyer did and planned
With him of the ensanguined hand,
With Huckleberry Finn!

Spirit of Mirth, whose chime of bells
Shakes on his cap, and sweetly swells
Across the Atla