What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells--
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor,
Now-now to sit or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,

By the twanging

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells

Of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

Hear the tolling of the bells

Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people-ah, the people

They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone

They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells

With the pean of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pean of the bells-
Of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells—

Of the bells, bells, bells,

To the sobbing of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-

To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-

Bells, bells, bells,

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

-Edgar A. Poe.

HUMOROUS AND SATIRICAL.

CLXXV.-DOUBLE MEANING.

THE English language abounds in words and phrases which may be understood in more than one way. This ambiguity occasions frequent mistakes, and suggests many catches and puzzles which afford a great deal of amusement. A familiar example is the word got, which is commonly used to mean was, as well as procured. For instance, one boy says to another, "Fred got shot this morning." "Where?" eagerly asks Fred's alarmed friend. "He bought it at Smith's hardware store," replies the joker.

A man told a merchant who hesitated to trust his companion for a purchase, "If he refuses to pay for it I will.” His companion afterward refusing to pay the merchant, the speaker also refused as, in one sense, he had said he would. A sheriff once asked the wife of a Quaker, for whom he had a writ, if her husband was at home. She replied, "He is, and he will see thee in a moment." The sheriff waited some time, but the Quaker failed to make his appearance. He had been content with seeing the sheriff, and took good care that that officer should not see him.

The punctuation of a sentence and the arrangement of the words composing it often give it a meaning entirely different from that intended. Two examples will sufficiently illustrate this. A minister, introducing an anecdote into his sermon, said, "Many years I rode over the broad western

prairies with my dear wife, who has long since gone to Heaven in a buggy." A soldier writing a letter to his sweetheart, closed with the words, "May God bless you and keep you from your sincere lover Henry Brown."

Newspapers often contain sentences, among both advertisements and reading matter, the construction of which affords ludicrous examples of carelessness or ignorance. Among the advertisements we may sometimes read that a respectable widow wants washing. The proprietor of a bone-mill once advertised that parties sending him their own bones would have them promptly and thoroughly ground. One paper states that a child was run over by a runaway horse wearing a short red dress which never spoke afterward. Another one, giving the account of a shipwreck, says, "There were no passengers on board except William Nathan, who owned half the cargo and the Captain's wife."

A man traveling upon a railway train said to another sitting beside him, “I have six children and have never seen one of them." "Why, sir," said the other with some surprise, "were you ever blind?" "No, sir." "Then how does it happen that you have never seen one of your children?" "The one I never saw was born since I left home," was the reply. A common puzzle is this: There was a blind beggar who had a brother; the brother died, but the man who died had no brother; what relation was the beggar to the man who died? We are apt to think that the blind beggar was a man, but when we remember that it might have been a woman the answer becomes quite plain.

We are told of two men who met at an inn, and greeted each other affectionately. The inn-keeper inquiring of one how he was related to the other, he replied,

Brothers and sisters have I none,

Yet this man's father was my father's son."

This is a plain statement, yet there are few whose minds