BILL AND JOE COME, dear old comrade, you and IWill steal an hour from days gone by,The shining days when life was new,And all was bright with morning dew,The lusty days of long ago,When you were Bill and I was Joe. Your name may flaunt a titled trailProud as a cockerel's rainbow tail,And mine as brief appendix wearAs Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare;To-day, old friend, remember stillThat I... more...

TO MY READERS NAY, blame me not; I might have sparedYour patience many a trivial verse,Yet these my earlier welcome shared,So, let the better shield the worse. And some might say, "Those ruder songsHad freshness which the new have lost;To spring the opening leaf belongs,The chestnut-burs await the frost." When those I wrote, my locks were brown,When these I write—ah, well a-day!The autumn... more...

THE PILGRIM'S VISION IN the hour of twilight shadowsThe Pilgrim sire looked out;He thought of the "bloudy Salvages"That lurked all round about,Of Wituwamet's pictured knifeAnd Pecksuot's whooping shout;For the baby's limbs were feeble,Though his father's arms were stout. His home was a freezing cabin,Too bare for the hungry rat;Its roof was thatched with ragged... more...

INTRODUCTION This series of papers was begun in March, 1888. A single number was printed, when it was interrupted the course of events, and not resumed until nearly years later, in January, 1890. The plan of the series was not formed in my mind when I wrote the number. In returning to my task I found that my original plan had shaped itself in the underground laboratory of my thought so that some... more...

The reader of to-day will not forget, I trust, that it is nearly a quarter of a century since these papers were written. Statements which were true then are not necessarily true now. Thus, the speed of the trotting horse has been so much developed that the record of the year when the fastest time to that date was given must be very considerably altered, as may be seen by referring to a note on page 49... more...

OPENING THE WINDOW THUS I lift the sash, so longShut against the flight of song;All too late for vain excuse,—Lo, my captive rhymes are loose. Rhymes that, flitting through my brain,Beat against my window-pane,Some with gayly colored wings,Some, alas! with venomed stings. Shall they bask in sunny rays?Shall they feed on sugared praise?Shall they stick with tangled feetOn the critic's poisoned... more...

PREFACE. In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conversations, a slight dramatic background shows off a few talkers and writers, aided by certain silent supernumeraries. The machinery is much like that of the two preceding series. Some of the characters must seem like old acquaintances to those who have read the former papers. As I read these over for the first time for a number of years, I... more...

AT MY FIRESIDE ALONE, beneath the darkened sky,With saddened heart and unstrung lyre,I heap the spoils of years gone by,And leave them with a long-drawn sigh,Like drift-wood brands that glimmering lie,Before the ashes hide the fire. Let not these slow declining daysThe rosy light of dawn outlast;Still round my lonely hearth it plays,And gilds the east with borrowed rays,While memory's mirrored... more...

GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY 'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembersAll the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls";When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story,To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals. I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April... more...

'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembersAll the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls;"When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story,To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals. I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running battle;Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see their red coats... more...