FUS NT.


[JANUARY 25, 1862.


 VERY KIND OF HIM.

Angelina :-"WELL,, CHARLEY, WHAT DID THE GROOM SAY ABOUT YOUR NEW PONY?"
Charle'y :-" To TELL THE TRUTH, IIE WAS RATHER INSULTING: BUT I DIDN'T THRASI THE FELLOW !"


 THE GHOST-HAUNTED.
DARK solemn shadows fling a pall upon this Wednesday night,
I feel I'm not the thing at all denominated right;
I've been out much this season, and I've conic home rather late,
And this may be the reason of my present shaky state.
They called the party festive," so it was beyond a doubt,
But pork is not digestive, nor does wine mix well with stout;
And I'm sipping weak tea only in a room with vacant chairs,
In my chambers dull and lonely up the topmost flight of stairs.
Oh, why does BurwEP LYTTON lead my fancy so astray ?
Some other plan I'll hit on to beguile the time away,
For reading that Strange Story" in the page of All the Year,
The lamp burns blue before me, and I get sensations queer.
Odd noises seem to creep about I do not like at all,
Grim faces seem to peep about in shadows on the wall,
And I shiver as with ague, when a voice cries, There are hosts
Of us that haunt and plague you; you're infested, sir, with ghosts.
"As you wander on undaunted, through the thickly-crowded
 street,
Do you journey ever haunted, at each turn a spectre meet,
Some faint shadowy retrospection bringing back before the eye,
A phantom recollection of a face and time gone by ?
To the mind that has a leaning towards the thoughts that once
 have been,
 Tlero are things that have a meaning by the outer world unseen,
 Shimmering fancies, blended grimly with your scenes of daily strife,
 Glimmering visions, floating dimly down the thoroughfare of life.
 "You have seen them-seen them often-make the boldest blench
 and start,
 Now they harden, now they soften, every fibre'of the heart,


Thronging thickly up around you, day by day, and week by week,
Sending back, where'er they found you, all the colour from the
 cheek ;
Staring out from yonder casement, stalking forth from yonder door,
Turning up, to one's amazement, on our very second floor;
Still they come to high and low born, night and morning still at
 hand,
In'the busiest parts of Holborn, in the noisiest of the Strand.
" There's the draper who has started Selling off,' but never doubt,
Of that business long departed, long the ghost will walk about;
There's the handbill undiminished with the puff of some one's
 pill,
And the quack you hoped was finished coming back to haunt you
 still.
The shopman's spectral particle requesting ere you go,
The name of the next article for which he won't take 'no;'
And he who whispering tells you he has fought in naval wars,
And adds ho cheaply sells you Baccy, brandy, or cigars.'
" Comes the organ (murdered VERDI), grinding tunes of old you
 knew,
Comes the bygone hurdy-gurdy, comes the Punch and Judy too;
Comes that old suburban trader with the story full of woe,
And the Negro serenader with the Bones of long ago.
Comes the whistle in the distance you hoped ne'er to hear again,
And the band to which resistance of the ears has proved in vain,
The muffin-bell that ceases not the system to distress,
The awful cry of Creases which they won't call water-cress.
"Your favourite penny journal has the same recurring cuts,
Your theatre that infernal little urchin cracking nuts;
Your dining-room, as ever, shows that same exhausting strife,
The hungry man's endeavour to sip gravy with his knife.


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