Apocalypse Averted?

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I hardly read newspapers nowadays. I just glance at the headlines which are full of uninteresting stuff. The Corruption thing has become a dead horse flogged ad infinitum.

There was an interesting suggestion though that Corruption should be legalized (like its close cousin, the oldest profession).

I recall reading a news item that our dear earth had a close shave from a passing comet or asteroid.

That recalled our Autocrat's Verses penned (literally) a century and half ago:

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"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

LATTER-DAY WARNINGS.

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, -

When lawyers take what they would give,
And doctors give what they would take, -
When city fathers eat to live,
Save when they fast for conscience' sake, -

When one that hath a horse on sale
Shall bring his merit to the proof,
Without a lie for every nail
That holds the iron on the hoof, -

When in the usual place for rips
Our gloves are stitched with special care,
And guarded well the whalebone tips
Where first umbrellas need repair, -

When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot
The power of suction to resist,
And claret-bottles harber not
Such dimples as would hold your fist, -

When publishers no longer steal,
And pay for what they stole before, -
When the first locomotive's wheel
Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore; -

TILL then let Cumming a blaze away,
And Miller's saints blow up the globe;
But when you see that blessed day,
THEN order your ascension robe!"

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