THE DREAM OF THE HALTER (7).

[Mulierem alicui copulare, et crucem ei imponere prorsus idem est.— PACIUCHELLI in Jonam, lib. i. p. 272.)

'LAST night

I awoke in a fright,

After a horrible dream that I had,

A concatenation of all that is bad.

I thought

I was brought

Under a terrible gallows-tree:

The look was enough to stagger me.

The bells from the steeple

Were ringing, the people

In plenty were gathering round to see.

I shook in my shoes;

The cold clammy dews

Of the horror of death broke out on my brow:

I had not the pluck of a man, I allow.

But I'm sure was not half as disposed to cry

As was I.

And methought as I stood on the scaffold, the noose Was fitted about me, at first rather loose,

But, tightening fast;

Hope was leaving at last.

I struggled for freedom, but struggled in vain,
The fiercer the struggle, the tighter the strain
And the keener the pain.

O for a knife

To sever the cord!

To escape with my life!

For be well assured

I didn't let Hope fly away beyond hail,
Without a considerable tug at her tail.
Then,-sudden I uttered a deafening scream,

And

-awoke from my dream.

Now you are a wizard. The Future you scan,
So you are the man

For the money I offer. Then prithee explain,
And rede me my vision, for wholly in vain
Have I battered my brain

To find the solution,-but all of my pain

Most fruitless has been.

Well! what does it mean?

I am sure, I repeat, that the vision I had

Is a prognostication of something bad.'

Gravely, yet slyly, the wizard, he scann'd
The marks on the nails, the lines in the hand,
Then lifting his face he solemnly eyed

His inquisitive customer, ere he replied:

'I think it no wonder you're frightened and harried; The vision is clear;

It means-do you hear?—

In the course of the week you are going to be married.'

THE TELESCOPE.

['Qui tubi optici usum ignorant, si præpostere oculo adhibeant, objecta etiam e longinquo sita longissimo intervallo distare, arbitrabuntur. O peccator! mortem quam longissime abesse credis? Adverte tuam imperitiam: tubum opticum secus adhibes, quam adhibere consueverant Sancti Dei. Disce ab his tubo uti.'-DE BARZIA, Manductio ad Excit. Christianorum, p. 52. August. Vend. 1732.]

JOHN BROWN and wife a-fairing went,

On business and on pleasure bent:

He, to inspect some cattle,

She, to procure some household stuff—

A boa, crinoline, and muff

And taste some tittle-tattle.

John sold full well a drove of sheep,

And bought some bullocks middling cheap,

After a wordy battle.

And Mistress Brown laid in some toys

For Bill and Joe, her precious boys,

A pop-gun and a rattle.

Now when the fair was done, the weather
Held up, so John and wife together