Alike was famous for his arm and blade. One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. Bare armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. "Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) "Friend, I have struck," the artist straight replied; "Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." Yet the cards they were stocked At the state of Nye's sleeve; Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, And the same with intent to deceive. But the hands that were played Were quite frightful to see- Then I looked up at Nye, And he gazed upon me; And he rose with a sigh, And said, "Can this be? We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor" And he went for that heathen In the scene that ensued I did not take a hand; But the floor it was strewed Like the leaves on the strand With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding, In the game "he did not understand." In his sleeves, which were long, Yet I state but the facts; And we found on his nails, which were taper, What is frequent in tapers-that's wax. As I sit at my desk by the window, when the garden with dew is wet, On the morning incense rises the breath of the mignonette, Laden with tender memories of thirty years ago, When she gave me her worthless promise, and we loved each other so, Till her tough old worldly mother let her maiden charms be sold To a miser, as hard and yellow as his hoard of shining gold. As in Central Park I met them on their cheerful morning ride, As she snarled at her henpecked husband who was crouching by her side, I thought in the dust of the pathway, "I have the best of you yet!" Far better the dream of a fadeless love in the breath of the mignonette, And little Alice and Mabel, and the children that might have been, Come dancing out on the paper at a twirl of the magic pen, Not a horrid boy among them, but a bevy of little girls With great brown eyes, love-shining, "mid a halo of golden curls. They never grow old or naughty; and in them I fail to see The slightest fault or taint of sin which could have been charged to me. They are mine, all mine forever! No lover to them can come, To steal away their loving hearts to grace a doubtful home. And so, when the tender evening or morning with dew is wet, I dream of my vanished darlings in the breath of the mignonette. GEORGE B. BARTLETT. |