, fair lady,"
With sorrowful accent said he,
"Is one you are not ready
So soon, alas! to hear.

"But since to speak I'm hurried,"
Added this page, quite flurried,
"Malbrouck is dead and buried!"
(And here he shed a tear.)

"He's dead! he's dead as a herring!
For I beheld his 'berring,'
And four officers transferring
His corpse away from the field.

"One officer carried his sabre,
And he carried it not without labour,
Much envying his next neighbour,
Who only bore a shield.

"The third was helmet-bearer--
That helmet which on its wearer
Filled all who saw with terror,
And covered a hero's brains.

"Now, having got so far, I
Find that (by the Lord Harry!)
The fourth is left nothing to carry;
So there the thing remains."

Translated by _Father Prout._

MARK TWAIN: A PIPE DREAM

Well I recall how first I met
Mark Twain--an infant barely three
Rolling a tiny cigarette
While cooing on his nurse's knee.

Since then in every sort of place
I've met with Mark and heard him joke,
Yet how can I describe his face?
I never saw it for the smoke.

At school he won a _smokership_,
At Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.)
His name was soon on every lip,
They made him "smoker" of his class.

Who will forget his smoking bout
With Mount Vesuvius--our cheers--
When Mount Vesuvius went out
And didn't smoke again for years?

The news was flashed to England's King,
Who begged Mark Twain to come and stay,
Offered him dukedoms--anything
To smoke the London fog away.

But Mark was firm. "I bow," said he,
"To no imperial command,
No ducal coronet for me,
My smoke is for my native land!"
For Mark there waits a brighter crown!
When Peter comes his card to read--
He'll take the sign "No Smoking" down,
Then Heaven will be Heaven indeed.

_Oliver Herford._

FROM A FULL HEART

In days of peace my fellow-men
Rightly regarded me as more like
A Bishop than a Major-Gen.,
And nothing since has made me warlike;
But when this age-long struggle ends
And I have seen the Allies dish up
The goose of Hindenburg--oh, friends!
I shall out-bish the mildest Bishop.

_When the War is over and the Kaiser's out of print
I'm going to buy some tortoises and watch the beggars sprint;
When the War is over and the sword at last we sheathe
I'm going to keep a jelly-fish and listen to it breathe._

I never really longed for gore,