The Editor's Valentine.

The editor sat in his old arm-chair
(Half his work undone he was well aware),
While the flickering light in the dingy room
Made the usual newspaper office gloom.

Before him news from the North and South,
A long account of a foreign drouth,
A lot of changes in local ads,
The report of a fight between drunken cads,

And odds and ends and smoke and talk,--
A reporter drawing cartoons in chalk
On the dirty wall, while others laughed,
And one wretch whistled, and all of them chaffed.

But the editor leaned far back in his chair;
He ran his hands through his iron-gray hair,
And stole ten minutes from work to write
A valentine to his wife that night.

He thought of metre, he thought of rhyme.
'Twas a race between weary brains and time.
He tried to write as he used to when
His heart was as young as his untried pen.

He started a sonnet, but gave it up.
A rondeau failed for a rhyme to "cup."