Yet to-day we shall not quarrel,

Just to show these folks this moral, How two Engines in their vision

Once have met without collision."

That is what the Engines said,

Unreported and unread;

Spoken slightly through the nose,

With a whistle at the close.

"THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS.”

MUD FLAT, 1860.

So you're back from your travels, old fellow,

And you left but a twelvemonth ago; You've hobnobbed with Louis Napoleon,

Eugenie, and kissed the Pope's toe.

By Jove, it is perfectly stunning,

Astounding, and all that, you know;

Yes, things are about as you left them
In Mud Flat a twelvemonth ago.

The boys! They're all right, -Oh! Dick Ashley,

He's buried somewhere in the snow;

He was lost on the Summit, last winter,

And Bob has a hard row to hoe.

You knew that he's got the consumption? You did n't! Well, come, that's a go;

I certainly wrote you at Baden, –

Dear me that was six months ago.

I got all your outlandish letters,

All stamped by some foreign P. O.

I handed myself to Miss Mary

That sketch of a famous château.

Tom Saunders is living at 'Frisco,

They say that he cuts quite a show. You didn't meet Euchre-deck Billy

Anywhere on your road to Cairo ?

So you thought of the rusty old cabin,
The pines, and the valley below;

And heard the North Fork of the Yuba,

As you stood on the banks of the Po? 'T was just like your romance, old fellow; But now there is standing a row

Of stores on the site of the cabin
That you lived in a twelvemonth ago.

But it's jolly to see you, old fellow,-
To think it's a twelvemonth ago!
And you have seen Louis Napoleon,
And look like a Johnny Crapaud.

Come in. You will surely see Mary,

You know we are married. What, no? —

O, ay. I forgot there was something

Between you a twelvemonth ago.

"TWENTY YEARS."

BEG your pardon, old fellow! I think

I was dreaming just now, when you spoke.

The fact is, the musical clink

Of the ice on your wine-goblet's brink

A chord of my memory woke.

And I stood in the pasture-field where
Twenty summers ago I had stood;

And I heard in that sound, I declare,

The clinkings of bells on the air,

Of the cows coming home from the wood.