Selected Poetry.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 190, 21 August 1869, Page 6

Selected Poetry.

CHARGE OF THE “ DRESS” BRIGADE. Half a league, half a league, half a league rearRight through the mire and dirt, [ward, Much to its beauty’s hurt, Trailed the rich silken skirt. Half a league rearward. Half a yard, half a yard, half a yard fully— Hirsute and woolly, Into the liquid air, Rode up the pile of hair, From other heads sundered ; While seated upon it Rode the brave bonnet— Rode, though it wondered ; Curls to the right of it, Curls to the left of it. Curls to the rear of it, Curls that were plundered. What though men shout, “ Oh, the Fortunes you’ve squandered !” Theirs not to make reply, Theirs but to dress or die, “ Charge !” to the clerks they cry—- “ Charge by the hundred !” — Anon.

Free Trade In America, — The Melbourne Argus says:—We are assured, upon the authority of the New York World, that the age of miracles has not passed. There has been a free-trade meeting in Philadelphia—the first gathering of the kind in that city for twenty - five years—and a protest against the so-called protective system; and a free-trade league has been formed in that city, which declares that “the tariffs of the United *States are all based upon temporary expediency, passed rapidly, modified, and continually tinkered in the attempt to harmonise conflicting home interests.” This expression from Philadelphia is light from darkness. Boston, too, is to have have a “ reform league,” to devote itself “to resumption of specie payments, reform in the civil service the negotiation of reciprocity treaties, and hostility to class legislation as well as to the reduction of duties on imports and Brooklyn has a free trade league, which has called a meeting, when Henry Ward Beecher will preside. This is significant No man knows better than does Mr. Beecher when the tide is turning, and when to take the tide. Free trade is exciting a great deal of attention throughout the country, and the formation of leagues in all the cities is the first result. Deserted by the United States, by Russia, and by Spain, protection before long will be unable to find any country in which to hide her crazy old head but the colony of Victoria.