have seen
them, and I can assure you they are very curious.

The following verses were found in the urn, or sugar-bowl.

CACOETHES SCRIBENDI.

If all the trees in all the woods were men,
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea
Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes
Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,
And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
The human race should write, and write, and write,
Till all the pens and paper were used up,
And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
Still would the scribblers clustered round its brim
Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

V

"Dolce, ma non troppo dolce," said the Professor to the Mistress, who
was sweetening his tea. She always sweetens his and mine for us. He
has been attending a series of concerts, and borrowed the form of
the directions to the orchestra. "Sweet, but not too sweet," he said,
translating the Italian for the benefit of any of the company who might
not be linguists or musical experts.

"Do you go to those musical hullabaloos?" called out Number Seven. There
was something very much like rudeness in this question and the tone in
which it was asked. But we are used to the outbursts, and extravagances,
and oddities of Number Seven, and do not take offence at his rough
speeches as we should if any other of the company uttered them.

"If you mean the concerts that have been going on this season, yes, I
do," said the Professor, in a bland, good-humored way.

"And do you take real pleasure in the din of all those screeching and
banging and growling instruments?"

"Yes," he answered, modestly, "I enjoy the brouhaha, if you choose to
consider it such, of all this quarrelsome menagerie of noise-making
machines, brought into order and harmony by the presiding genius,
the leader, who has made a happy family of these snarling stringed
instruments and whining wind instruments, so that although

"Linguae centum sent, oraque centum,

"notwithstanding there are a hundred vibrating tongues and a hundred
bellowing mouths, their one grand blended and harmonized uproar sets all
my fibres tingling with a not unpleasing tremor."

"Do you understand it? Do you take any idea from it? Do you know what it
all means?" said Number Seven.

The Professor was long-suffering under this series o