Page:The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858) Holmes.djvu/48

26 by layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is the better of the two.

I should have felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken; and besides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I cannot bring myself to think was made for nothing. If certain things, which seem to me essential to a millennium, had come to pass, I should have been frightened; but they haven't. Perhaps you would like to hear my

When legislators keep the law, When banks dispense with bolts and locks, When berries, whortle—rasp—and straw— Grow bigger downwards through the box,— When he that selleth house or land Shows leak in roof or flaw in right,— When haberdashers choose the stand Whose window hath the broadest light,— When preachers tell us all they think, And party leaders all they mean,— When what we pay for, that we drink, From real grape and coffee-bean,—