validity of all this, I have not hesitated to reprint even certain "epitaphs" which, once of the living, are now of the dead, as all the others must eventually be. The objection inheres in all forms of applied satire—my understanding of whose laws and liberties is at least derived from reverent study of the masters. That in respect of matters herein mentioned I have but followed their practice can be shown by abundant instance and example.

AMBROSE BIERCE.

THE KEY NOTE

I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I lay
  In a garden with flowers teeming.
On an island I lay in a mystical bay,
  In the dream that I dreamed I was dreaming.

The ghost of a scent—had it followed me there
  From the place where I truly was resting?
It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air,
  The presence of roses attesting.

Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamed
  That the place was all barren of roses—
That it only seemed; and the place, I deemed,
  Was the Isle of Bewildered Noses.

Full many a seaman had testified
  How all who sailed near were enchanted,
And landed to search (and in searching died)
  For the roses the Sirens had planted.

For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomed
  In the stead of their singing forever;
But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed,
  Though man had discovered them never.

I thought in my dream 'twas an idle tale,
  A delusion that mariners cherished—
That the fragrance loading the conscious gale
  Was the ghost of a rose long perished.

I said, "I will fly from this island of woes."
  And acting on that decision,
By that odor of rose I was led by the nose,
  For 'twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian.

I ran, in my madness, to seek out the source
  Of the redolent river—directed
By some supernatural, sinister force
  To a forest, dark, haunted, infected.

And still as I threaded ('twas all in the dream
  That I dreamed I was dreaming) each turning
There were many a scream and a sudden gleam
  Of eyes all uncannily burning!

The leaves were all wet with a horrible dew
  That mirrored the red moon's crescent,
And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue,
  Dim, wavering, phosphorescent.

But the fragrance divine, coming strong and free,
  Led me on, though my blood was clotting,
Till—ah, joy!—I could see, on the limbs of a tree,
  Mine enemies hanging and rotting!

CAIN

Lord, shed thy light upon his desert path,
  And gild his branded brow, that no man spill
  His forfeit life to balk thy holy will
That spares him for the ripening of wrath.

Already, lo! the red sign is descried,
  To trembling jurors visibly revealed:
  The prison doors obediently yield,
The baffled hangman flings the cord aside.

Powell, the brother's blood that marks your trail—
  Hark, how it cries against you from the ground,
  Like the far baying of the tireless hound.
Faith! to your ear it is no nightingale.

What signifies the date upon a stone?
  To-morrow you shall die if not to-day.
  What matter when the Avenger choose to slay
Or soon or late the Devil gets his own.

Thenceforth through all eternity you'll hold
  No one advantage of the later death.
  Though you had granted Ralph another breath
Would he to-day less silent lie and cold?

Earth cares not, curst assassin, when you die;
  You never will be readier than now.
  Wear, in God's name, that mark upon your brow,
And keep the life you purchased with a lie!

AN OBITUARIAN

Death-poet Pickering sat at his desk,
  Wrapped in appropriate gloom;
His posture was pensive and picturesque,
  Like a raven charming a tomb.

Enter a party a-drinking the cup
  Of sorrow—and likewise of woe:
"Some harrowing poetry, Mister, whack up,
  All wrote in the key of O.

"For the angels has called my old woman hence
  From the strife (where she fit mighty free).
It's a nickel a line? Cond—n the expense!
  For wealth is now little to me."

The Bard of Mortality looked him through
  In the piercingest sort of a way:
"It is much to me though it's little to you—
  I've taken a wife to-day."

So he twisted the tail of his mental cow
  And made her give down her flow.
The grief of that bard was long-winded, somehow—
  There was reams and reamses of woe.

The widower man which had buried his wife
  Grew lily-like round each gill,
For she turned in her grave and came back to life—
  Then he cruel ignored the bill!

Then Sorrow she opened her gates a-wide,
  As likewise did also Woe,
And the death-poet's song, as is heard inside,
  Is sang in the key of O.

A COMMUTED SENTENCE

Boruck and Waterman upon their grills
  In Hades lay, with many a sigh and groan,
  Hotly disputing, for each swore his own
Were clearly keener than the other's ills.
  And, truly, each had much to boast of—bone
And sinew, muscle, tallow, nerve and skin,
Blood in the vein and marrow in the shin,
  Teeth, eyes and other organs (for the soul
Has all of these and even a wagging chin)
  Blazing and coruscating like a coal!
For Lower Sacramento, you remember,
Has trying weather, even in mid-December.

Now this occurred in the far future. All
  Mankind had been a million ages dead,
  And each to her reward above had sped,
Each to his punishment below,—I call
  That quite a just arrangement. As I said,
Boruck and Waterman in warmest pain
Crackled and sizzed with all their might and main.
  For, when on earth, they'd freed a scurvy host
Of crooks from the State prison, who again
  Had robbed and ravaged the Pacific Coast
And (such the felon's predatory nature)
Even got themselves into the Legislature.

So Waterman and Boruck lay and roared
  In Hades. It is true all other males
  Felt the like flames and uttered equal wails,
But did not suffer them; whereas they bored
  Each one the other. But indeed my tale's
Not getting on at all. They lay and browned
Till Boruck (who long since his teeth had ground
  Away and spoke Gum Arabic and made
Stump speeches even in praying) looked around
  And said to Bob's incinerated shade:
"Your Excellency, this is mighty hard on
The inventors of the unpardonable pardon."

The other soul—his right hand all aflame,
  For 'twas with that he'd chiefly sinned, although
  His tongue, too, like a wick was working woe
To the reserve of tallow in his frame—
  Said, with a sputtering, uncertain flow,
And with a gesture like a shaken torch:
"Yes, but I'm sure we'll