MOSQUITOES.

I HAD a pretty tumultuous time of it, in bed, last night. Oh, how the mosquitoes did behave! There were actually four of the villains, at one time, singing, and biting, all together, on the end of my nose. Cunning old stagers; had they lighted on my forehead, there might have been some chance of annihilating them. But their intelligence, confound them, is even greater than their malignity.

Was it mere vocalization, though? I thought I distinctly heard articulate sounds. Yes, I fancied that I actually heard the scoundrels talking over the next summer campaign. Why not? There have been such things, as Parliaments of bees; and their labors of legislation have been sung in some of the sweetest of English poetry. There have been "Convocations of politic worms," too; and wherefore, not, then, a Caucus of mosquitoes? It must have been so; and my poor nose was the scene of their vile intrigues!

Let them hold another meeting there to-night, if they dare, the scamps; the teazing, temper-trying, diabolical

Hollo, hollo! Don't get into a passion, man. Don't use such vile language, to a poor little innocent chaunting cherub of a mosquito, if you please. These youngsters meant you no harm. They were merely out on a professional tour; in the line of their duty. Have they not as good a right to their living, as you to yours? There was no malice in the transaction. When these M.D.'s of Insectdom, were sticking their lancets in your proboscis, they were discharging their appropriate functions; they were glorifying their Creator, in their own small, peculiar way.

Say you so? Why, the same pretty reasoning would apply, with equal force, to the malignant copperhead, or the unsavory skunk, or the loathsome rat. Poh, poh! The idea of being humbugged out of one's righteous indignation, by any such paltry sophistry as that! A precious salve for my wounds, this doctrine; this short-hand solution of the problem of evil! You might as well insist upon my holding a bunch of stramonium under my nose, or putting it in the same bouquet with the camelia, because it is alike the work of the Great Designer! Is a man to be fooled out of his seven senses in this absurd manner?

While thus debating the matter within myself, and bothering my poor, bitten noddle, with the unprofit

able speculations involved in it,

still fuller, both of bites and fury.

Quizzico entered,

How he went on!

This is too bad, said he, to be cheated out of one's rest, and blood, in this scandalous style! I am willing to be made a meal of by worms, when my time comes; but as to being tormented, and disfigured, every season, in this way, I don't relish it. And then, to be told, as I was yesterday, by a fool of a Grahamite, that I had no business to indulge in animal food; when I was myself, a mere supper for mosquitoes, the whole livelong night. But I have taken a glorious revenge. I have consigned them to an immortality of infamy. Read that. And he thereupon handed me the following

STANZAS.

Ye wandering minstrels of the night,

Why thus my dreams invade ?
My blood I grant ye, but forbear
Your cursed serenade.

Why can't ye eat your meals in peace,
And drain your victims' veins;
And not, with those infernal chants,
Thus aggravate our pains?

In vain I slap, and kick, and cuff,
And toss about in bed:

Still do ye sing, and sting, and cling
To my devoted head!

Still do ye come, with buzz, and hum,
And martial music loud,

From Jersey Flats, from Hackensack,
A sanguinary crowd!

Ye pounce on all, both great and small,
Through every skin ye bore;
From tender babe, and gentle maid,
Up to old, tough fourscore.

Nor prayers, nor bars, can long keep out
The pricking of your prongs;
Still, still ye suck the sufferer's blood,
Still taunt him with your songs.

Talk not of bugs, or bats, or rats;
Curse not the invading roach;
Not e'en the adder's venomed fang
Such malice doth approach.

In all life's other plagues and ills,
Some latent good we find;
Something to soothe, and reconcile
The philosophic mind.

But ye, atrocious pests, in your

Unmitigated evil,

Are plainly Satan's handiwork,

Inventions of the Devil!

It was curious, that I had myself, in a similar fit

of inspiration, commenced a small poem, on the same theme.

TO A MOSQUITO.

Whither, midst falling blows,

While glows the victim of thy dread affray

With wrath, dost take, far from his bleeding nose,
Thy sanguinary way?

Vainly the sufferer's eye

Doth mark thy devious flight, to do thee wrong,
As, demon-like, beneath the moon-lit sky,

Thy figure flits along!

Could it be pos

Here I stopped; and in time, too. sible, that I was trifling thus, with one of the grandest, noblest, poems in the language!

As to Quizzico's attempt, I must say, I don't think much of it. It may be a slight improvement upon his Tomato-stanzas, but the truth is, the Gods have not made him poetical. He will never soar very high in the first heaven of invention, let alone the seventh. Neither effort will ever see the year of grace, 2,000. Their author must be contented to gather simples and whortleberries, around the base of Parnassus; it is not for him to recline, in laurelcrowned glory, on its summit. His verses are good enough to put round sugar-plums, but not fit to enter into a Book of Gems. Let his Muse confine herself to singing the praises of Cherry Pectorals, Nervous Antidotes, and such like boons to humanity! I am sure he will never agree with me, in his cooler mo

ments.