When thus for half an hour or more

He'd played his idle tricks,

And wounded something like a score

Of people with the bricks,

A man who kept a fuel shop

Across from where he sat

Remarked: "Well, this has got to stop."

Then, snatching up his hat,

And sallying out, began to shout:

"Look here! Come down from that!"

The boastful boy to laugh began,

As laughs a vapid clown,

And cried: "It takes a bigger man

Than you to call me down!

This wall is smooth, this wall is high,

And safe from every one.

No acrobat could do what I

Had been and gone and done!"

Though this reviled, the other smiled,

And said: "Just wait, my son!"

Then to the interested throng

That watched across the way

He showed with smiling face a long

And slender Henry Clay,

Remarking: "In upon my shelves

All kinds of coal there are.

Step in, my friends, and help yourselves.

And he who first can jar

That wretched urchin off his perch

Will get this good cigar."

The throng this task did not disdain,

But threw with heart and soul,

Till round the youth there raged a rain

Of lumps of cannel-coal.

He dodged for all that he was worth,

Till one bombarder deft

Triumphant brought him down to earth,

Of vanity bereft.

"I see," said he, "that this is the

Coal day when I get left."

The moral is that fuel can

Become the tool of fate

When thrown upon a little man,

Instead of on a grate.

This story proves that when a brat

Imagines he's admired,

And acts in such a fashion that

He makes his neighbors tired,

That little fool, who's much too cool;

Gets warmed when coal is fired.