560 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
And members hint with equanimic pride, 
What stupid fools are all the world outside,— 
How Spencer’s laurels would dry up and pale, 
And Darwin droop an atavistic tail! 
Your duty’s plain, to tell in turn each friend 
How well his learning and his judgment blend,— 
With tacit right while paying court’sy’s debt, 
To think you write a little better yet. 
But cursed be he whose jealous tongue instills 
Doubt of the wisdom of his brother Phils! 
Swear every paper’s full of lore and profit, 
Though lead in weight and drier e’en than Tophet! 
But while for rivals we prepare the killings, 
Let’s joy in cooings here,—likewise in Billings, 
And ’mid our joys yet humbly make avowal 
Our pow-wow ’ll never do without our Powell! 
Newcomb and Eastman hint of rising stars, 
And Hall once kindly gave twin moons to Mars. 
Our Abbe(y) rears a vane that wind foretells, 
And ’round us rings a Peale of merry Bells. 
We own gay Ho(l)mes, however plain our dwelling, 
And must keep well while always keeping Welling. 
Old father Saturn, as the myth is told, 
Ate up his children ere they grew too old ; 
But this Society with bounteous care 
Brought forth a brood that try to eat their mire 
The Anthropops of course were cannibals, 
Biologers claimed all the animals, 
Geographers grabbed air and land and tide,— 
And sharps in drugs and bugs stole all beside. 
Scared by this coming internecine wreck, 
All hands essayed all arts the doom to check ; 
And we tried divination, 
Haruspiciation, 
Alectryomances 
And hypnotic trances, 
And fakir round dances, 
And the garter that fell in the Ross’ seances, 
The watchword of strikes by the Carnegie artisans, 
And the harmony twixt Grover C. and the partisans. 
We conned then the newspaper pharmacopoeia, 
And dosed with Pond’s Extract and Swaim’s Panacea; 
Hall’s Sicilian Renewer and Barrett’s Restorer, 
Rad way’s Ready Relief and McClain’s Dermadorer. 
We boiled down in cauldrons things heavy and sound, 
Patent Office reports, Coast Survey volumes, bound; 
