Or droop o'er the sod where the long grasses nod,

My name is as old as the glory of God.

So I came by the name of Old Glory.
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.

New World

and Old Glory

In Merry Mood

"Then cast away care, let sorrow cease,
A fig for melancholy.”

All rules are suspended, grave affairs of state are laid aside, and the Court Jester demands a hearing. Is it my fancy, or do young eyes brighten, rosy cheeks dimple, lips part a little when he approaches?

Clad all in gay motley, swinging his bauble, his cap and bells making merry music, he bounds upon the stage and bids us listen to his quips and jokes. He is by turns Puck and Ariel, Harlequin, Punchinello, and Court Fool. "Touchstone" we well may call him, this man of mirth, for when he tests the world's metal the pure gold of laughter shines out from the alloy. Seeing us smile even before he opens his lips he assumes a solemn attitude and cries:

"Good people all, of every sort,

Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short
It will not hold you long."

Then hark how the "light-heeled numbers laughing go! He tells us tales that smooth out the wrinkles of dull Care and provoke Laughter to hold both his sides, as well as others less jolly but full of wit and good cheer. A quaint, breezy moral, too, creeps in here and there, for the Court Fool, if you study him well, is sometimes a preacher; but whether frolicking or preaching or philosophizing, he brings with him, like Milton's nymph:

"Jest and youthful jollity,

Quips and cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks and Wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's check,

And love to live in dimple sleek.”

XII

IN MERRY MOOD

On a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes

"T WAS on a lofty vase's side

Where China's gayest art had dyed,
The azure flowers that blow,
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared:
The fair, round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,

Her coat that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,-
She saw, and purred applause.

Still had she gazed, but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The Genii of the stream:

Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue,
Through richest purple, to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.