And every time they shoot it off,

It takes a horn of powder,

And makes a noise like father's gun, Only a nation louder.

I went as nigh to one myself,
As Siah's underpinning;
And father went as nigh again :
I thought the deuce was in him.

Cousin Simon grew so bold,

I thought he would have cock'd it;
It scar'd me so, I shrink'd it off
And hung by father's pocket.

And Captain Davis had a gun,
He kind of clapt his hand on't,
And stuck a crooked stabbing iron
Upon the little end on't.

And there I see a pumpkin shell
As big as mother's bason;
And every time they touched it off,
They scampered like the nation.

I see a little barrel too,

The heads were made of leather, They knock'd upon't with little clubs, And call'd the folks together.

And there was Captain Washington,
And gentlefolks about him,
They say he's grown so tarnal proud,
He will not ride without 'em.

He got him on his meeting clothes, Upon a slapping stallion,

He set the world along in rows,

In hundreds and in millions.

The flaming ribbons in his hat,
They look'd so taring fine ah,
I wanted pockily to get,

To give to my Jemimah.

I see another snarl of men

A digging graves, they told me,
So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,
They 'tended they should hold me.

It scar'd me so, I hook'd it off,
Nor stop'd, as I remember,
Nor turn'd about, 'till I got home,
Lock'd up in mother's chamber.

A CENTURY OF
AMERICAN LITERATURE.

PHILIP FRENEAU

was of Huguenot stock, and was born at New York in 1752. He was graduated from Princeton College in 1771, where James Madison was his room-mate. He was taken prisoner by the British during the war of the Revolution, and confined on the prison ship Scorpion in the Hudson River. He has commemorated this experience in his poem The British Prison Ship. After the close of the war he engaged alternately in journalism and navigation. He edited successively the New York Daily Advertiser, the Philadelphia National Gazette, the Jersey Chronicle, and the New York Time-piece and Literary Companion. His politics were anti-Federalist, and he enjoyed the patronage of Jefferson, who appointed him translating-clerk in the State Department. The best edition of Freneau's poems, which are largely satirical and political, was printed in 1795, at his own press at Mount Pleasant N. J. He died in 1832.

THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND.

In spite of all the learn'd have said,
I still my old opinion keep:
The posture that we give the dead,

Points out the soul's eternal sleep.

Not so the ancients of these lands---
The Indian when from life released,
Again is seated with his friends,

And shares again the joyous feast.

His imaged birds, and painted bowl,

And venison, for a journey dressed, Bespeak the nature of the soulActivity that knows no rest.

His bow, for action ready bent,
And arrows, with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is spent,
And not the finer essence gone.

Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,
No fraud upon the dead commit-
Observe the swelling turf, and say,
They do not lie, but here they sit.

Here still a lofty rock remains,

On which the curious eye may trace (Now wasted, half, by wearing rains,) The fancies of a ruder race.

Here still an aged elm aspires,
Beneath whose far-projecting shade
(And which the shepherd still admires)
The children of the forest played!

There oft a restless Indian queen
(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair),
And many a barbarous form is seen

To chide the man that lingers there.

By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In vestments for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,-

The hunter and the deer a shade!

And long shall timorous fancy see
The painted chief and pointed spear,
And Reason's self shall bow the knee
To shadows and delusions here.

THE INDIAN STUDENT; OR, FORCE OF NATURE.
From Susquehanna's farthest springs,

Where savage tribes pursue their game
(His blanket tied with yellow strings),
A shepherd of the forest came.

Not long before, a wandering priest
Expressed his wish with visage sad :
"Ah why," he cried, "in Satan's waste,
Ah why detain so fine a lad?

"In white-man's land there stands a town
Where learning may be purchased low:
Exchange his blanket for a gown,
And let the lad to college go."

From long debate the council rose,
And viewing Shalum's tricks with joy,
To Cambridge Hall, o'er wastes of snows,
They sent the copper-colored boy.