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THIS is the Frame Range of best northern pine,

The banquet on which hungry flames love to dine,

Which agents so oft manage not to decline,

But write (in their slop-bowls) a "moderate line,"

Because—don't you see—the commish is so fine.

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Ha! this is the range which delighted to carry

The passenger flames o'er the devil's own ferry,

And utilize mischief by spreading it faster

Than men could compete with the fearful disaster.

How sad and how strange are the memories now

Which hang round the heels of that old Leary cow—

That wretched old cow with the crumpled horn

That kicked over the lamp that set fire to the barn

That caused the Great Fire in Chicago!

THIS is the Company, gloomy and glum,

Which admits that it has some few (?) losses, yes some!

But its officers think their best motto is "mum,"

As they stroke their gray chins and look wise and sing dumb;

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While inside they are praying, "Good Lord, please deliver

Our souls from the fear of old Miller's receiver."

And they view with the most acrimonious hate

That regurgitant cow at O'Leary's back gate,

As she stood on the night of October the 8,

When she kicked at the lamp that set fire to the barn

That caused the Great Fire in Chicago!

THIS is the Statement the Company made:

(Directors and Officers thickly arrayed,

To soften the jar as they strike the up grade,

Where the millions of losses will have to be paid.)

"Our agency records, we deeply regret,

Are burned at Chicago, are out in the wet,

Or else there is, h—m, there is some slight impediment,

Some something-or-other, some sand or some sediment

Has got in the keyhole, disordered the lock,

Or razeed the dividends, watered the stock,

Or some trifling thing not yet quite in sight;

But the Company, sir, is all right, is all right;

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Our surplus is safe, and our stock is intact,

Our losses are all reinsured—why, in fact,

We never, in all our official career,

Felt more gay and festive, more full of good cheer.

Just put up the rates and go on with the biz,

These losses will all be arranged with a whiz.

The thing we will have straightened out in a jiffy,

And the next that you'll hear will be ten per cent, divvy."

But you ought to have seen them when, in the back room,

They poured out anathemas like a mill-flume

On that old Leary cow with the crumpled horn

That kicked over the lamp that set fire to the barn

That caused the Great Fire in Chicago!