What the Engines said.

Why, I reckon, it's confessed,

That I've done my level best."

Said the Engine from the EAST,
"They who work best talk the least.
S'pose you whistle down your brakes;
What you've done is no great shakes,—
Pretty fair, but let our meeting
Be a different kind of greeting.

Let these folks with champagne stuffing,
Not their Engines, do the puffing.

"Listen! Where Atlantic beats.
Shores of snow and summer heats;
Where the Indian autumn skies

Paint the woods with wampum dyes,---
I have chased the flying sun,

Seeing all he looked upon,

Blessing all that he has blest,

Nursing in my iron breast

All his vivifying heat,

All his clouds about my crest,

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And before my flying feet

Every shadow must retreat."

Said the Western Engine, "Phew!" And a long, low whistle blew.

(( Come now, really that's the oddest

Talk for one so very modest.

You brag of your East!

You do?

Why, I bring the East to you!

All the Orient, all Cathay,

Find through me the shortest way;

And the sun you follow here

Rises in my hemisphere.

Really, if one must be rude,—

Length, my friend ain't longitude."

Said the Union, "Don't reflect, or
I'll run over some Director."
Said the Central, "I'm Pacific;
But, when riled, I'm quite terrific.
Yet to-day we shall not quarrel,
Just to show these folks this moral,

What the Engines said.

How two Engines-in their vision-
Once have met without collision."

That is what the Engines said,
Unreported and unread;

Spoken slightly through the nose,
With a whistle at the close.

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"THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS."

MUD FLAT, 1869.

So you're back from your travels, old fellow,
And you left but a twelvemonth ago :
You've hobnobbed with Louis Napoleon,
Eugenie, and kissed the Pope's toe.
By Jove! it is perfectly stunning,
Astounding, and all that, you know:
Yes, things are about as you left them
In Mud Flat a twelvemonth ago.

The boys! They're all right,-Oh! Dick Ashley,
He's buried somewhere in the snow;

He was lost on the Summit, last winter,
And Bob has a hard row to hoe.

You knew that he's got the consumption?

You didn't! Well, come, that's a go:

"The Return of Belisarius." I certainly wrote you at Baden,Dear me ! that was six months ago

I got all your outlandish letters,
All stamped by some foreign P.O.
I handed myself to Miss Mary

That sketch of a famous château.
Tom Saunders is living at 'Frisco,—
They say that he cuts quite a show.
You didn't meet Euchre-deck Billy
Anywhere on your road to Cairo?

So you thought of the rusty old cabin,
The pines, and the valley below;
And heard the North Fork of the Yuba,
As you stood on the banks of the Po?
'Twas just like your romance, old fellow;
But now there is standing a row

Of stores on the site of the cabin

That you lived in a twelvemonth ago.

But it's jolly to see you, old fellow,—
To think it's a twelvemonth ago!

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