TO AN ASPIRANT.

By Ambrose Bierce

What! you a Senator — you, Mike de Young?

Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung?

Sir, if all Senators were such as you,

Their hands so crimson and so slender, too,—

( Shaped to the pocket for commercial work,

For literary, fitted to the dirk ) —

So black their hearts, so lily-white their livers,

The toga's touch would give a man the shivers.