They get your coin the neatest,
And leave you looking seediest
In Kentucky.

Short-skates are the thickest
In Kentucky,
They spot a sucker quickest
In Kentucky.
They'll set up to a drink,
Get your money 'fore you think,
And you get the "dinky dink"
In Kentucky.

If you want to be fraternal
In Kentucky,
Just call a fellow "Colonel"
In Kentucky,
Or, give a man a nudge
And say, "How are you, Judge?"
For they never call that "fudge"
In Kentucky.

But when you have tough luck
In Kentucky,
In other words "get stuck"
In Kentucky,
Just raise your voice and holler
And you'll always raise a dollar,
While a drink is sure to follow
In Kentucky.

'Tis true that birds sing sweetest
In Kentucky,
That women folk are neatest
In Kentucky,
But there are things you shouldn't tell
About our grand old State--and, well--
Politics is h----l
In Kentucky.

IN DEEPER VEIN.

The Incubus.

The way was dark within the gloomy church-yard,
As I wandered through the woodland near the stream,
With slow and heavy tread
Through a city of the dead,
When suddenly I heard a dreadful scream.

My heart gave frantic leap, as when the roebuck
Is started by the clamor of the chase,
And I halted all atremble
In the vain hope to dissemble,
Or cloak the leaden pallor on my face.

'Twas in the ghostly month of grim December,
The frozen winds were bitter in their cry
And I muttered half aloud
To that white and silent crowd:
"'Tis a somber month to live in or to die."

And then as if in answer to my whisper,
Came a voice of some foul fiend from Hell:
"No longer live say I,
'Tis better far to die
And let the falling snow-flakes sound the knell."

Perched upon a tombstone sat the creature
Grewsome as an unquenched, burning lust.
Sitting livid there
With an open-coffin stare--
A stare that seemed the mocking of the just.

And in my thoughts the dreadful thing is sitting--
Sitting there with eyelids red and blear,
And see it there I will
'Til my restless soul is still
And the earth-clods roll and rumble on my bier.

TO CLARA MORRIS.

In days gone by, the poets wrote
Sweet ve