 | The collected works of Ambrose Bierce |  |
276
CALIFORNIAN SUMMER PICTURES
THE FOOT-HILL RESORT
Assembled in the parlorOf the place of last resort,
The smiler and the snarler
And the guests of every sort—
The elocution chap
With rhetoric on tap;
The mimic and the funny dog;
The social sponge; the money-hog;
Vulgarian and dude;
And the prude;
The adiposing dame
With pimply face aflame;
The kitten-playful virgin
Of a half-a-hundred years;
The solemn-staring sturgeon
Of a firm of auctioneers;
The widower flirtatious;
The widow all too gracious;
The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath.
One assassin picks his banjo, and another one his teeth.
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THE IN-COMING CLIMATE
Now o' nights the ocean breezeMakes the patient flinch,
For that zephyr bears a sneeze
In every cubic inch.
Lo! the admiring population
Chorusing in sternutation
A catarrhal acclamation!
A LONG-FELT WANT
Dimly apparent, through the gloomOf Market-street's opaque simoom,
A queue of people, parti-sexed,
Awaiting the command of “Next!”
A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:
“Teeth dusted nice—five cents a shine.”
TO THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS
Wide windy reaches of high stubble field;A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines;
A wagon moving in a “cloud by day”;
Two city sportsmen with a dove between,
Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep—
A solitary dove, the only dove
In twenty counties, and it sick, or else
It were not there. Two guns that fire as one,
With thunder simultaneous and loud;
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And later, in the gloaming, comes a man—
The worthy local coroner is he,
Renowned all thereabout, and popular
With many a remain. All tenderly
Compiling in a game-bag the remains,
He glides into the gloom and fades from sight.
The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock,
Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet,
To die of age in some far foreign land.
| The collected works of Ambrose Bierce | |