w?'
'In that hotel,' he answered, with a bow.
The pages said,--'Ha! dare you call hotel
A palace, where the King of Balkh doth dwell?'
IBRAM the King next to the dervish spoke:
'My palace a hotel? Pray, where's the joke?'
'Who,' asked the dervish, 'owned this palace first?'
'My grandsire,' IBRAM said, while wrath he nursed.
'Who was the next proprietor?' please say.
'My father:' thus the king replied straightway.
'Who hired it then upon your father's death?'
'I did,' King IBRAM answered, out of breath.
'When you shall die, who shall within it dwell?'
'My son,' the King replied. 'Why ask'st thou? Tell!'
'IBRAM!' then spoke the dervish to him straight,
'I'll answer thee, nor longer make thee wait.
The place where travelers come, and go as well,
Is, really, not a palace, but--hotel!'

Yea, friends; and, as another genial poet has discovered, life itself is
but a hostelrie or tavern, where some get the highest rooms, while
others, of greater social weight, gravitate downwards into the first
story, sinking like gold to the bottom of the hotel pan,--that is O.W.
HOLMES', his idea, reader, not ours. _Apropos_ of HOLMES and kings--his
thousands of reader friends have ere this seen with pleasure that the
Emperor of all the French was not unmindful of one of his
brother-potentates,--in the world of song,--when he paid OLIVER WENDELL
the courteous compliment which has of late gone the rounds, and which
conferred as much honor on the giver as the taker thereof.

* * * * *

The Spring poems have begun. _Vide licet_.

TO AN EARLY BIRD.

In homely phrase we oft are told
'Tis early birds that catch the worms;
But certainly that Spring bird there
Don't half believe the aforesaid terms.

He's sorry that he hither flew,
In hopes a forward March to find,
And towards warm climates, whence he came,
To backward march is sore inclined.

Lured by one ray of sunlight, he
Flew northward to our land of snow;
And now, with frozen toes, he stands
On frozen earth:--the worms--below!

Tu whit! whit! whit! he tries in vain
To whistle in a cheerful way;
He feels he's badly sold, and that--
He came _too early_ in the day.

I sprinkle seed and crumbs around;
He quickly flies and famished eats:--
He would have starved to death had he
Relied on proverb-making cheats.

* * * *