music. But I have sailed with you, on a summer day, bland master
of a faithless band; and I know how soon your pipes are dumb--I know the
tricks and manners of the clouds and the wind, and the swelling sea, and
Jane Moseley, the perfidious.

I must, after all, have strong local attachments, for when at last the
time came to land I left the ship with lingering reluctance. My feet
seemed fastened to the deck where I had made my brief home on the much
rolling deep. I had grown used to pain and resigned to fate. I walked
the plank unsteadily. I stood on shore amid the rain and the mist. A
hackman preyed upon me. I was put into an ancient ark and trundled on
through the queer, irresolute, contradictory old streets, beside the
lovely bay, all aglow with the lighted yachts, as a Southern swamp is
with fire-flies. A torchlight procession met and escorted me. To this
hour I am at a loss to know whether this attention was a delicate
tribute on the part of the city of Newport to a distinguished guest, or
a parting attention from the company who sail the Jane Moseley, and
advertise in the _Tribune_--a final subterfuge to persuade a tortured
passenger, by means of this transitory glory, that the sail upon a
summer sea had been a pleasure trip.--_Letter to New York Tribune._

CHAPTER VIII.

HUMOROUS POEMS.

I will next group a score of poems and doggerel rhymes with their
various degrees of humor.

THE FIRST NEEDLE.

BY LUCRETIA P. HALE.

"Have you heard the new invention, my dears,
That a man has invented?" said she.
"It's a stick with an eye
Through which you can tie
A thread so long, it acts like a thong,
And the men have such fun,
To see the thing run!
A firm, strong thread, through that eye at the head,
Is pulled over the edges most craftily,
And makes a beautiful seam to see!"

"What, instead of those wearisome thorns, my dear,
Those wearisome thorns?" cried they.
"The seam we pin
Driving them in,
But where are they by the end of the day,
With dancing, and jumping, and leaps by the sea?
For wintry weather
They won't hold together,
Seal-skins and bear-skins all dropping round
Off from our shoulders down to the ground.
The thorns, the tiresome thorns, will prick,
But none of them ever consented to stick!
Oh, won't the men let us this new thing use?
If we