It was three o'clock when they got to bed;
Even then through Mrs. Mackerel's head
Such gorgeous dreams went whirling away,
"Like a Catherine-wheel," she declared next day,
"That her brain seemed made of sparkles of fire
Shot off in spokes, with a ruby tire."

Mrs. Mackerel had ever been
One of the upward-tending kind,
Regarded by husband and by kin
As a female of very ambitious mind.
It had fretted her long and fretted her sore
To live in the rear of the grocery-store.
And several times she was heard to say
She would sell her soul for a year and a day
To the King of Brimstone, Fire, and Pitch,
For the power and pleasure of being rich.

Now her ambition had scope to work--
Riches, they say, are a burden at best;
Her onerous burden she did not shirk,
But carried it all with commendable zest;
Leaving her husband with nothing in life
But to smoke, eat, drink, and obey his wife.
She built a house with a double front-door,
A marble house in the modern style,
With silver planks in the entry floor,
And carpets of extra-magnificent pile.
And in the hall, in the usual manner,
"A statue," she said, "of the chased Diana;
Though who it was chased her, or whether they
Caught her or not, she could, really, not say."
A carriage with curtains of yellow satin--
A coat-of-arms with these rare devices:
"A mackerel sky and the starry Pisces--"
And underneath, in the purest fish-latin,
_If fishibus flyabus
They may reach the skyabus!_

Yet it was not in common affairs like these
She showed her original powers of mind;
Her soul was fired, her ardor inspired,
To stand apart from the rest of mankind;
"To be A No. one," her husband said;
At which she turned very angrily red,
For she couldn't endure the remotest hint
Of the grocery-store, and the mackerels in't.
Weeks and months she plotted and planned
To raise herself from the common level;
Apart from even the few to stand
Who'd hundreds of thousands on which to revel.
Her genius, at last, spread forth its wings--
Stilts, golden stilts, are the very things--
"I'll walk on stilts," Mrs. Mackerel cried,
In the height of her overtowering pride.
Her husband timidly shook his head;
But she did not care--"For why