"_Completed_" the inscription ended, "_in
The Year Three Thousand_"--which was just arriving.
By Jove! thought I, 'twould make the founders grin
To learn whose fame so long has been surviving--
To read the name posterity will place
In that blank void, and view the finished face.

Even as I gazed, the year Three Thousand came,
And then by acclamation all the people
Decreed whose was our century's best fame;
Then scaffolded the statue like a steeple,
To make the likeness; and the name was sunk
Deep in the pedestal's metallic trunk.

Whose was it? Gentle reader, pray excuse
The seeming rudeness, but I can't consent to
Be so forehanded with important news.
'Twas neither yours nor mine--let that content you.
If not, the name I must surrender, which,
Upon a dead man's word, was George K. Fitch!




AN ART CRITIC


Ira P. Rankin, you've a nasal name--
I'll sound it through "the speaking-trump of fame,"