BY ICHABOD BOGGS,

THE NEW AMERICAN POET.

PREFATORY NOTE.--The reader is requested to judge the following
production mildly, as it is the first effort of a youthful genius (16
years old in looks and feeling, 42 by the family bible and census.) The
author has felt that America should have a new kind of verse of its own,
and he thinks he here offers one which has never been used by any other
mortal poet. It is called the duodekameter. Perhaps it may be proper to
add that the following is _poetry_.

I.

You see everybody in our town was running around, getting fat jobs
and positions, and picking up a million dollars or so,
So I felt it incumbent on me
To shake myself up, and see if there wasn't a good butter firkin, well
filled, loafing around idle, in which could conveniently locate my
centre of gravity, and so I said to myself, I'll go
To Washington and see,
Says ICHABOD BOGGS, says I.

II.

Now, don't you see, you might just as well ask for a big position at
first, and then take what you can get,
At least that has been my rule so far,
For, as I says to myself, if you can only get a very high position, with
a sort of nabob's salary, and lots of perquisites running in