breath:
"I have had no hand in this deed of death!"

A Fenian, making a circuit wide
And passing them by on the other side,
Shudders and crosses himself and cries:
"Who says that I did it, he lies, he lies!"

Gingerly stepping across the gore,
Pat Satan comes after the two before,
Makes, in a solemnly comical way,
The sign of the cross and is heard to say:
"O dear, what a terrible sight to see,
For babes like them and a saint like me!"

1882.

AN AVERAGE.

I ne'er could be entirely fond
Of any maiden who's a blonde,
And no brunette that e'er I saw
Had charms my heart's whole
warmth to draw.

Yet sure no girl was ever made
Just half of light and half of shade.
And so, this happy mean to get,
I love a blonde and a brunette.

WOMAN.

Study good women and ignore the rest,
For he best knows the sex who knows the best.

INCURABLE.

From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy--
From any kind of vice, or folly,
Bias, propensity or passion
That is in prevalence and fashion,
Save one, the sufferer or lover
May, by the grace of God, recover:
Alone that spiritual tetter,
The zeal to make creation better,
Glows still immedicably warmer.
Who knows of a reformed reformer?

THE PUN.

Hail, peerless Pun! thou last and best,
Most rare and excellent bequest
Of dying idiot to the wit
He died of, rat-like, in a pit!

Thyself disguised, in many a way
Thou let'st thy sudden splendor play,
Adorning all where'er it turns,
As the revealing bull's-eye burns,
Of the dim thief, and plays its trick
Upon the lock he means to pick.

Yet sometimes, too, thou dost appear
As boldly as a brigadier
Tricked out with marks and signs, all o'er,
Of rank, brigade, division, corps,
To show by every means he can
An officer is not a man;
Or naked, with a lordly swagger,
Proud as a cur without a wagger,
Who says: "See simple worth prevail--
All dog, sir--not a bit of tail!"

'T is then men give thee loudest welcome,
As if thou wert a soul from Hell come.

O obvious Pun! thou hast the grace
Of skeleton clock without a case--
With all its boweling displayed,
And all its organs on parade.

Dear Pun, you're common ground of bliss,
Where _Punch_ and I can meet and kiss;
Than thee my wit can stoop no low'r--
No higher his does ever soar.

A PARTISAN'S