His comrade sinks down with a groan-- Black Loris is fighting alone, His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed, And his arms as heavy as stone. “Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand, For answer he sabres the chief of the band. But his arm is shivered in twain--he feels The earth swim round him--he gasps, he reels, And gleam on his vision old scenes afar, As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar-- Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal? No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel! Black Loris is not alone!
No tears for the ninety-nine, The nation’s heart is their shrine; But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise For the one man left of the line! The Don’s deep waters will long be dried, And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide, The strength and glory of Russia depart, And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart, Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell Of dashing Loris who fought so well, Whose comrades tore him from out the grave, Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave. And for years to come, when trotting along Ural and Don, men will sing this song-- “The One and the Ninety-Nine!”
Mr. Phineas Phlynn, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits included an addiction to French wines and Irish whiskey, a decided inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.