ation.

Our fathers drank to Santa Claus, the sixth of each December,
And still we keep his feast because his virtues we remember.
Among the saintly ranks he stood, with smiling human features,
And said, "_Be good! But not too good to love your fellow-creatures!_"

December 6, 1907.

ARS AGRICOLARIS

An Ode for the "Farmer's Dinner," University Club, New York,
January 23, 1913

All hail, ye famous Farmers!
Ye vegetable-charmers,
Who know the art of making barren earth
Smile with prolific mirth
And bring forth twins or triplets at a birth!
Ye scientific fertilizers of the soil,
And horny-handed sons of toil!
To-night from all your arduous cares released,
With manly brows no longer sweat-impearled,
Ye hold your annual feast,
And like the Concord farmers long ago,
Ye meet above the "Bridge" below,
And draw the cork heard round the world!

What memories are yours! What tales
Of triumph have your tongues rehearsed,
Telling how ye have won your first
Potatoes from the stubborn mead,
(Almost as many as ye sowed for seed!)
And how the luscious cabbages and kails
Have bloomed before you in their bed
At seven dollars a head!
And how your onions took a prize
For bringing tears into the eyes
Of a hard-hearted cook! And how ye slew
The Dragon Cut-worm at a stroke!
And how ye broke,
Routed, and put to flight the horrid crew
Of vile potato-bugs and Hessian flies!
And how ye did not quail
Before th' invading armies of San Jose Scale,
But met them bravely with your little pail
Of poison, which ye put upon each tail
O' the dreadful beasts and made their courage fail!
And how ye did acquit yourselves like men
In fields of agricultural strife, and then,
Like generous warriors, sat you down at ease
And gently to your gardener said, "Let us have _Pease_!"

But _were_ there Pease? Ah, no, dear Farmers, no!
The course of Nature is not ordered so.
For when we want a vegetable most,
She holds it back;
And when we boast
To our week-endly friends
Of what we'll give them on our farm, alack,
Those things the old dam, Nature, never sends.

O Pease in bottles, Sparrow-grass in jars,
How often have ye saved from scars
Of shame, and deep embarrassment,
The disingenuous farmer-gent,
To whom some wondering guest has cried,
"How _do_ y