happy!! happy!!!

Gourdon, the clerk of the court, brother of the doctor, was a pitiful
little creature, whose features all gathered about his nose, so that the
nose seemed the point of departure for the forehead, the cheeks, and
the mouth, all of which were connected with it just as the ravines of a
mountain begin at the summit. This pinched little man was thought to be
one of the greatest poets in Burgundy,--a Piron, it was the fashion to
say. The dual merits of the two brothers gave rise to the remark: "We
have the brothers Gourdon at Soulanges--two very distinguished men; men
who could hold their own in Paris."

Devoted to the game of cup-and-ball, the clerk of the court became
possessed by another mania,--that of composing an ode in honor of an
amusement which amounted to a passion in the eighteenth century. Manias
among mediocrats often run in couples. Gourdon junior gave birth to his
poem during the reign of Napoleon. That fact is sufficient to show
the sound and healthy school of poesy to which he belonged; Luce de
Lancival, Parny, Saint-Lambert, Rouche, Vigee, Andrieux, Berchoux were
his heroes. Delille was his god, until the day when the leading society
of Soulanges raised the question as to whether Gourdon were not superior
to Delille; after which the clerk of the court always called his
competitor "Monsieur l'Abbe Delille," with exaggerated politeness.

The poems manufactured between 1780 and 1814 were all of one pattern,
and the one which Gourdon composed upon the Cup-and-Ball will give an
idea of them. They required a certain knack or proficiency in the art.
"The Chorister" is the Saturn of this abortive generation of jocular
poems, all in four cantos or thereabouts, for it was generally admitted
that six would wear the subject threadbare.

Gourdon's poem entitled "Ode to the Cup-and-Ball" obeyed the poetic
rules which governed these works, rules that were invariable in their
application. Each poem contained in the first canto a description of
the "object sung," preceded (as in the case of Gourdon) by a species of
invocation, of which the following is a model:--

I sing the good game that belongeth to all,
The game, be it known, of the Cup and the Ball;
Dear to little and great, to the fools and the wise;
Charming game! where the cure of all tedium lies;
When we toss up the ball on the point of a stick
Palamedus himself might have envied the trick;
O Muse of the Loves and the Laughs and