"I've studied owls,

And other night fowls,

And I tell you

What I know to be true:

An owl cannot roost

With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.

He can't do it, because
'Tis against all bird-laws
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches

An owl has a toe

That can't turn out so!

I've made the white owl my study for years,

And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!

Mister Brown, I'm amazed

You should be so gone crazed

As to put up a bird

In that posture absurd!

To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;

The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!" And the barber kept on shaving.

"Examine those eyes.
I'm filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;

So unnatural they seem
They'd make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"With some sawdust and bark
I would stuff in the dark
An owl better than that;
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,

Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
"Your learning's at fault this time, anyway;
Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-day!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

of finding out, though "lying low,"

How near New York their schooners ran.

They greased the lead before it fell,
And then, by sounding through the night,
Knowing the soil that stuck, so well,
They always guessed their reckoning right.

A skipper gray, whose eyes were dim, Could tell, by tasting, just the spot, And so below he'd "dowse the glim"After, of course, his "something hot."

Snug in his berth, at eight o'clock,
This ancient skipper might be found;
No matter how his craft would rock,
He slept for skippers' naps are sound!

The watch on deck would now and then Run down and wake him, with the lead; He'd up, and taste, and tell the men How many miles they went ahead.

One night, 'twas Jotham Marden's watch,
A curious wag-the peddler's son-
And so he mused (the wanton wretch),
"To-night I'll have a grain of fun.

"We're all a set of stupid fools
To think the skipper knows by tasting

What ground he's on-Nantucket schools
Don't teach such stuff, with all their basting!"

And so he took the well-greased lead
And rubbed it o'er a box of earth
That stood on deck-a parsnip-bed-
And then he sought the skipper's berth.

"Where are we now, sir? Please to taste."
The skipper yawned, put out his tongue,
Then ope'd his eyes in wondrous haste,
And then upon the floor he sprung!

The skipper stormed and tore his hair,

Thrust on his boots, and roared to Marden,

"Nantucket's sunk, and here we are

Right over old Marm Hackett's garden !"

The Pettibone Lineage

My name is Esek Pettibone, and I wish to affirm in the outset that it is a good thing to be well-born. In thus connecting the mention of my name with a positive statement, I am not unaware that a catastrophe lies coiled up in the juxtaposition. But I cannot help writing plainly that I am still in favor of a distinguished family-tree. Esto perpetua! To have had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting. To be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick, I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been do e him in the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington, I thought the Duke felt a propensity to "hunch up some." Somehow it is pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to do so.

Left an orphan at the tender age of four years, having no brothers or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar. Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked about for protection; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately way, said, "The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never want while his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with my plain but benignant protectors, in the State of New Hampshire.

During my boyhood the best-drilled lesson that fell to my keeping was this: "Respect yourself. We come of more than