: The Comet and Other Verses by Dix Irving Sidney - American poetry

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Editor: Francis Burnand

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

Volume 108. MARCH 2nd, 1895.

TALL TALES OF SPORT AND ADVENTURE.

In these awful circumstances, with the night air whistling past me, and with my beloved CHUDDAH and her nurse hurtling upwards beside me, it is scarcely necessary for me to say that I never for an instant lost my coolness and my perfect self-possession. That the situation was dangerous, nay, almost desperate, I fully realised, but it is in these very situations that true courage and resourcefulness are always of the highest value. Again and again in the course of my long life have I plucked safety, aye, and that which is higher and better than all safety, namely, reputation, from the nettle danger. Let fools prate as they will; the brave man must always rise triumphant above the stormy waves of envy and detraction.

These thoughts, I admit, did not occur to me at the moment. Our flight was too perilous and too swift to allow me to think of aught save what concerned the immediate necessities of this truly fearful crisis. Poor little CHUDDAH, I observed, being made of lighter material, was gradually outstripping me in this dreadful and involuntary race. First her head topped me; then her shoulders soared beyond me; at last her feet were on a level with my face. As one of them passed upwards, I was just able by leaning slightly forward, to imprint a kiss upon it. "Farewell, CHUDDAH," I sighed, as the lovely foot left my lips. "Farewell, ORLANDO," she murmured all but inaudibly, and fled up, up, up into the dismal night. I never saw her again.

At this moment I looked down.

BAR NONE!

RE-GILDING THE GOLDEN EAGLE.

"Why, I was a thinking, Sir," returned MARK TAPLEY, "that if I was a painter, and was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?"

"Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose."

"And like a Phnix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky!" said MARTIN.

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