67 



Paris undoes the work of Paradise, 



And views its mangling with admiring eyes; 



Beflounced, bepanniered, and be who dare tell? 



The country maid blooms out a city belle. 



Now home returned, how all the rustics stare, 



What comments pass upon her gait and air, 



What adjectives set forth her altered state ! 



All eyes are curious, and some flash with hate. 



Can this be she, our little modest maid, 



This gorgeous dame, so flauntingly arrayed? 



This strange shaped mass of flounces and of fuss, 



Whose wondrous outlines shock and startle us ? 



The mad creation of some crazy dream, 



Such as inspires the art of Vinnie Keam. 



"And still they gaze, and still their wonder grows," 



That one small dress can carry all those bows. 



And some such change, perhaps, the world may deem 



Has come across the spirit of our dream, 



When the grave, staid and solemn Institute 



Comes out in worldly style, in party suit, 



Forsakes its search in Indian heaps of shell, 



To test instead the mollusks of Cassell; 



Studies Crustacea in their salad state ; 



Puts Darwin's jelly in a china plate; 



Leaves ornithology's hard terms untried, 



Enamored with the partridge at its side ; 



Adopts a glacial theory in a trice, 



Choosing 'twixt lemon and vanilla ice ; 



Plies knife and fork with scarce a moment's stay, 



And on to grave conclusions eats its way. 



"Is this?" "Is this?" cry people, horrified, 



"Is this the Institute, the city's pride? 



Are these the men that meet in yonder room, 



And sit with faces wrapped in funeral gloom, 



Scowling at bugs, and ferns and pickled fish, 



That form the common Monday evening's dish? 



Are these the calls of science, this the quest 



Which men push on with such a wondrous zest? 



Is this the way they burn the midnight oil, 



And talk to-morrow of their heavy toil? 



The secret's out ; this jovial throng, to-night, 



With merry laugh and boundless appetite, 



Careless of isms and of theories deep, 



Toying with viands that will murder sleep, 



