ich side
At present runs "the flowing tide;"
I'd not be stranded with the ebb--
I've shunned the Grand Old Spider's web;
I am not like a simple fly;
I take my hook, and mind my eye.

I'll not with Caucus gudgeons wait,
Prepared to gorge whatever bait.
How poor a thing, wire-pullers find,
Will captivate the Caucus mind!
Yet latterly, to my surprise,
Unto _my_ bait it fails to rise.

But here, though while I fish I fast
From the political repast,
Yet, as my new-found friends invite,
I'll take the swim, I'll watch the bite.
Should chance the Coalition dish,
_There_'d be a pretty kettle o' fish!

So I'm content this post to take,
Alone, but calm and wide awake.
Anglers "lie low" just now and then,
Much more so we fishers of men.
Here I can "bob," smoke, make a name,
And from afar watch the whole game.

I fancy that, were RANDOLPH here,
He'd smile, and share my bottled beer.
Both fishers we; by brain not book,
Take our own line, on our own hook.
I'll watch which way the home wind blows,
And when 'tis settled--well, who knows?

* * * * *

AT HOME WITH ATOMS.

DEAR MR. PUNCH,--After listening to Sir HENRY ROSCOE'S Address at the
Free Trade Hall last evening, my brain feels very much like a "molecule
on the eve of being broken into atoms," by the grandeur of the subject
on which he discoursed, and as he so kindly told us this catastrophe
"may be brought about not only by heat vibrations, but likewise by an
electrical discharge at a comparatively low temperature," the present
state of the weather rather adds to the anxiety I feel about the seat of
my mental organisation. Still "there is a fundamental difference," he
tells us, "between the question of separating the atoms in the molecule,
and that of splitting up the atom itself," so that there seems to be a
remote chance in any case of my preserving an atom or two of sound sense
and intelligence in the midst of impending chaos, the more so, as "even
the highest of terrestrial temperatures, that of the electric spark, has
failed to shake any atom in two."

In the course of his address Sir H. ROSCOE also said, "There is no such
thing in nature as great or small." I was always considered the smallest
in my family, and it seems difficult, though at the same time
encouraging, to believe I am equal in physical quantities of height and
weight to the other me