LINES.

I SAW him set forth in the morning; his cheek was suffused with a glow,

While daintily picking a pathway through the mud and the ice and the snow;

His visage was mild, but determined; his smile it was stoic and hard;

And his limbs slightly shook with emotion as he passed on his way through the "Yard."

One hand grasped a new five-cent blank-book which he nervously pressed to his side,

As the peals from a neighboring belfry sounded forth o'er the air far and wide;

The other some SALTS in a bottle, which since then I have learned that he used

To keep him from getting excited or his brain from becoming confused.

He reached those long steps of white granite, sprang up with a stride and a bound;

Then, gaining the summit, he panted, and gazed for an instant around.

His face wore a troubled expression, which I never had noticed before,

When suddenly, with a wild gesture, he vanished from sight through the door.

I saw him again in the evening; but, heavens! how altered a man!

The glow on his cheek had departed; his visage was haggard and wan.

I watched him with pity as slowly he strayed with an aspect forlorn,

And greatly I marvelled within me at the change which had come since the morn.

I followed him closer, and noticed that his eyes bent an idiot's stare

Upon the ground o'er which he wandered, while his lips slightly moved, as in prayer.

Astonished I listened, and heard him mutter low with a half-smothered sigh,

"All z's which are y's are some x's, yet all x which is z is not y."

I sat by his bed through that evening; the poor creature fitfully snoozed;

I needed no doctor to tell me that his brain was most sadly confused.

At intervals of a few minutes he would shriek in stentorian tone,

"Celarent," "Felapton," "Bramantip," and then would smile faintly and moan.

Now and then he would wake for an instant; his eye with a bright light would gleam,

As he piteously begged me to give him a nice and well-formed "Enthymeme."

When I tenderly asked him if "better," he replied, in irascible mood,

That "the fallacy of many questions" had never done him any good.

I saw he was in a "Dilemma," such a vary "Destructive" one too,

That, dreading "invalid conclusion," I was quite at a loss what to do.

So I sat by his bedside, lamenting the state of his mind in such strife,

Till just at one-half past eleven he departed this sorrowing life.

Gentle friends! that the study of Logic is equally harmless and good

When taken in due moderation, we frankly admit, as we should.

Yet let us remember that warning which is given to small boys at schools,

Which judiciously urges great caution when playing with very sharp tools.

H. R. Z.