3. Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,

Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,

Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,

With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang,
Over and over the Mænads sang:

4. Small pity for him!-he sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay-
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own towns-people on her deck!
"Lay by! lay by !" they called to him;
Back he answered, "Sink or swim!

25

30

35

Brag of your catch of fish again!"

40

And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!

5. Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie for evermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea—
Looked for the coming that might not be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away?—

45

50

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead !

6. Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide,
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head and fist and hat and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"

7. Sweetly along the Salem road

Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
Little the wicked skipper knew

Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.
Riding there in his sorry trim,

Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting far and near:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"

8. "Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried-
"What to me is this noisy ride?
What is the shame that clothes the skin
To the nameless horror that lives within ?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me-I only dread

The hand of God and the face of the dead!"
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead !

75

80

85

9. Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea

Said, "God has touched him!—why should we?"
Said an old wife mourning her only son,

"Cut the rogue's tether, and let him run !"

So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead !

90

95

CHARACTERIZATION BY J. G. WHITTIER.

1. If any reader (and at times we fear it is the case with all) needs amusement, and the wholesome alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend him not to Dr. Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the wit, and the humorist; not to the scien

tific medical professor's barbarous Latin, but to his poetical prescriptions, given in choice old Saxon. We have tried them, and are ready to give the doctor certificates of their efficacy.

2. Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a physician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why, one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head-the cachinnation of a monk's memento mori. This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its best estate. The brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast" of the future or the past. But it is the special vocation of the doctor to look only upon the shadow; to turn away from the house of feasting and go down to that of mourning; to breathe day after day the atmosphere of wretchedness; to grow familiar with suffering; to look upon humanity disrobed of its pride and glory, robbed of all its fictitious ornaments-weak, helpless, naked-and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis from its erect and Godlike image, the living temple of an enshrined divinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust. His ideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of his heart, are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his luckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth, earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only delicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek, of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism, nervousness. Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm i' the bud," of the mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a Giaour upon the spear of a Janizary, and he can only think of lack of exercise, of tight lacing, and slippers in winter.

3. So much for speculation and theory. In practice it is not so bad after all. The grave-digger in Hamlet has his jokes and grim jests; we have known many a jovial sexton; and we have heard clergymen laugh heartily, at small provocation, close on the heel of a cool calculation that the great majority of their fellowcreatures were certain of going straight to perdition. Why, then, should not even the doctor have his fun? Nay, is it not his duty to be merry, by main force, if necessary? Solomon, who, from his great knowledge of herbs, must have been no mean practitioner for his day, tells us that "a merry heart doeth good like a