"There was a mad man,

And he had a mad wife,

And the children were mad beside;

So on a mad horse

They all of them got,

And madly away did ride."

Sagacious Goose! Fresh wonders yet!

"What spell had power to help you get

Those seven-leagued spectacles, that see

Down to the nineteenth century?

"The mad world, and his madder wife!"

That, in your earlier time of life,—

Though quite demented now,?t is plain,—

Were sober, grave, and almost sane!

And all the tribes, a motley brood

Sprung into being since the flood,

With their hereditary bent

To cerebral bewilderment!

If some old ghost, precise and slow,

Who died a hundred years ago,—

Always supposing he himself

Has lain, meanwhile, upon the shelf,—

Things as they are might only see,

Surely his inference would be

A simultaneous bursting out

Of lunacy the earth about.

The world is mad; his wife is mad;

The rising generation's madder;"

And when a charter can be had,

Up to the moon they 'll build a ladder!

They caught a horse awhile ago,—

They called him Steam,—but he was

slow;

After the lightning then they ran,

Caught him,—and now they drive the

span!—1860.

P. S.—1870.

The great Pacific railroad's done;

They've poured two oceans into one:

Two shores with whispering cable tied,

And cut a path for ships to ride,

Where camel-tracks had used to be,

Through desert sands, from sea to sea.

Moon, quoth I? Faith, they 've made a

moon!

Leastwise, they 've thought one; * and so

soon

Upon man's whim his stroke succeeds,

And turns his dreams into his deeds,

Look sharply! for with word and blow,

They 'll swing one up before you know!

1882.

Why put a double P. S. in?

'T would need a daily bulletin

To tell how fast the craze goes on,

With Keeley and with Edison;

With things to eat, and things to travel,—

Bicycles spinning o'er the gravel,—

Great guns to simplify the fights,—

Suns outshone with electric lights,—

The whisper in the closet stirred

In sooth across the housetops heard,

And when the airy tangle tires

Earth to be veined with throbbing wires.

Women to physic and to preach,

And help the national bird to screech;

One man on Wall-Street curb to stand,

With twenty railroads in his hand;

Schools for the mass, effecting this,

That all may know what most must miss

Ah, who so sage that can pretend

To pre-sage of such tale the end?

I press the limit of my page;

So, haply, may this frantic age!