Author: Guy Wetmore Carryl

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b"> The lengthy discussion That sensitive Russian

Compiled on the U. S. A. Was read by the maid, As she carelessly played

With her beautiful hair one day. “The talk you hear in that primitive land,” He wrote, “nobody can understand.” “Somebody who guffed him,” She said, “has stuffed him, And easily bluffed him

To beat the band!”

[80]The Moral: The people across the brine Are exceedingly strong on Auld Lang Syne, But they’re lost in the push when they strike a gang That is strong on American new line slang!

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[81]How Thomas a Maid from
a Dragon Released

Though Philip the Second Of France was reckoned

No coward, his breath came short When they told him a dragon As big as a wagon

Was waiting below in the court! A dragon so long, and so wide, and so fat, That he couldn’t get in at the door to chat: The king couldn’t leave him Outside and grieve him, He had to receive him

Upon the mat,

[82]The dragon bowed nicely, And very concisely

He stated the reason he’d called: He made the disclosure With frigid composure.

King Philip was simply appalled! He demanded for eating, a fortnight apart, The monarch’s ten daughters, all dear to his heart. “And now you’ll produce,” he Concluded, “the juicy And succulent Lucie

By way of start!”

King Philip was pliant, And far from defiant

—“And servile,” no doubt you retort!— But if you struck a snag on A bottle-green dragon,

Who filled up two-thirds of your court, And curled up his tail on your new tin roof, And made your piazza groan under his hoof, Would you threaten and thunder, Or just knuckle under Completely, I wonder,

If put to proof?

[83]

By way of a truce, he Brought out little Lucie

And watched her conducted away, But all of the others Were out with their brothers!

Thus gaining a little delay, He promised through heralds sent west and east, His crown, and his kingdom, and last, not least, His daughter so sightly To any one knightly Who’d come and politely

Wipe out that beast!

[84]For love of the charmer, Arrayed in his armor,

Each suitor for glory who yearned, Would gallantly hasten, The dragon to chasten,

But none of them ever returned! When the dragon had eaten some sixteen score He hung up this sign on his cavern door, Whereat he lay pronely In majesty lonely:

There’s Standing Room Only

For Three Knights More!

A slim adolescent, His beard only crescent,

Rode up at this stage of the game To where the old sinner Lay gorged with his dinner,

And breathing out torrents of flame. He gathered a tip from the flaunting sign, And took his position the fourth in line, Until, as foreboded, By food incommoded, The dragon exploded

At half-past nine.

[85]

This shows how a servant may laugh at the Fates, Since everything comes to the fellow who waits.[86]

[87] The king was delighted At first when he sighted

The victor, but then in dismay Regretted his promise. The stripling was Thomas,

His Majesty’s valet-de-pied! He asked him at once: “Will you compromise?” But Thomas looked straight in his master’s eyes, And answered severely: “I see your game clearly, And scorn it sincerely.

Hand out the prize!”

Not long did he linger Before on the finger

Of Lucie he fitted a ring: A month or two later They made him dictator,

In place of the elderly king: He was lauded by pulpit, and boomed by press, And no one had ever a chance to guess, Beholding this hero Who ruled like a Nero, His valor was zero,

Or something less.

The Moral: And still from Nice to Calais Discretion’s the better part of—

[88]—valets!

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[89]How a Beauty was Waked
and Her Suitor was Suited

Albeit wholly penniless, Prince Charming wasn’t any less

Conceited than a Croesus or a modern millionaire: Though often in necessity, No one would ever guess it. He

Was candidly insolvent, and he frankly didn’t care! Of the many debts he made Not a one was ever paid,

But no one ever pressed him to refund the borrowed gold: While he recklessly kept spending, People gladly kept on lending,

For the fact they knew a title

Was requital

Twenty-fold!

(He lived in sixteen sixty-three,

This smooth unblushing article,

Since when, as far as I can see,

Men haven’t changed a particle!)

[90]In Charming’s principality There was a wild locality,

Composed of sombre forest, and of steep and frowning crags, Of pheasant and of rabbit, too; And here it was his habit to

Go hunting with his courtiers in the keen pursuit of stags. But the charger that he rode So mercurially strode

That the prince on one occasion left the others in the lurch, And the falling darkness found him, With no vassals left around him,

Near a building like an abbey,

Or a shabby

Ruined church. His Highness said: “I’ll ring the bell

And stay till morning in it!” (He Took Hobson’s choice, for no hotel

There was in the vicinity.)

[91]His ringing was so vehement That any one could see he meant

To suffer no refusal, but, in spite of all the din, There was no answer audible, And so, with courage laudable,

His Royal Highness turned the knob, and stoutly entered in. Then he strode across the court, But he suddenly stopped short

When he passed within the castle by a massive oaken door: There were courtiers without number, But they all were plunged in slumber,

The prince’s ear delighting

By uniting

In a snore. The prince remarked: “This must be Philadelphia, Pennsylvania!” (And so was born the jest that’s still

The comic journal’s mania!)

This shows how the prince won the princess’s heart, And the end of her sleeping was simply a start.

[92]With torpor reprehensible, Numb, comatose, insensible,

The flunkeys and the chamberlains all slumbered like the dead, And snored so loud and mournfully, That Charming passed them scornfully

And came to where a princess lay asleep upon a bed. She was so extremely fair That His Highness didn’t care

For the risk, and so he kissed her ere a single word he spoke:— In a jiffy maids and pages, Ushers, lackeys, squires, and sages,

As fresh as if they’d been at least

A week awake,[93]

[94]

Awoke, And hastened, bustled, dashed and ran

Up stairways and through galleries: In brief, they one and all began

Again to earn their salaries!

[95]

[96]Aroused from her paralysis, As if in deep analysis

Of him who had awakened her, the princess met his eye: Her glance at first was critical, And sternly analytical.

And then she dropped her lashes and she gave a little sigh. As he watched her, wholly dumb, She observed: “You doubtless come

For one of two good reasons, and I’m going to ask you which. Do you mean my house to harry, Or do you propose to marry?”

He answered: “I may rue it,

But I’ll do it,

If you’re rich!” The princess murmured with a smile:

“I’ve millions, at the least, to come!” The prince cried: “Please excuse me, while

I go and get the priest to come!”

The Moral: When affairs go ill The sleeping partner foots the bill.

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[97]How Jack Found that Beans
May go Back on a Chap

Without the slightest basis For hypochondriasis

A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung, And with expression cynical For half the day a clinical

Thermometer she held beneath her tongue.

Whene’er she read the papers She suffered from the vapors,

At every tale of malady or accident she’d groan; In every new and smart disease, From housemaid’s knee to heart disease,

She recognized the symptoms as her own!

She had a yearning chronic To try each novel tonic,

Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm; And from a homœopathist Would change to an hydropathist,

And back again, with stupefying calm!

[98]

The closets of her villa Were full of sarsaparilla,

Ammonia, digitalis, bronchial troches, soda mint. Restoratives hirsutical, And soaps to clean the cuticle,

And iodine, and peptonoids, and lint.

She was nervous, cataleptic, And anemic, and dyspeptic:

Though not convinced of apoplexy, yet she had her fears. She dwelt with force fanatical Upon a twinge rheumatical,

And said she had a buzzing in her ears!

[99]Now all of this bemoaning And this grumbling and this groaning

The mind of Jack, her son and heir, unconscionably bored. His heart completely hardening, He gave his time to gardening,

For raising beans was something he adored.

[100] Each hour in accents morbid This limp maternal bore bid

Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys. She never granted Jack a day Without some long “Alackaday!”

Accompanied by rolling of the eyes.

But Jack, no panic showing, Just watched his beanstalk growing,

And twined with tender fingers the tendrils up the pole. At all her words funereal He smiled a smile ethereal,

Or sighed an absent-minded “Bless my soul!”

[101]That hollow-hearted creature Would never change a feature:

No tear bedimmed his eye, however touching was her talk. She never fussed or flurried him, The only thing that worried him

Was when no bean-pods grew upon the stalk!

But then he wabbled loosely His head, and wept profusely,

And, taking out his handkerchief to mop away his tears, Exclaimed: “It hasn’t got any!” He found this blow to botany

Was sadder than were all his mother’s fears.

[102]The Moral is that gardeners pine Whene’er no pods adorn the vine. Of all sad words experience gleans The saddest are: “It might have beans.”

(I did not make this up myself:

’Twas in a book upon my shelf.

It’s witty, but I don’t deny

It’s rather Whittier than I!)

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[103]How a Cat Was Annoyed and
a Poet Was Booted

A poet had a cat. There is nothing odd in that—

(I might make a little pun about the Mews!) But what is really more Remarkable, she wore

A pair of pointed patent-leather shoes.

And I doubt me greatly whether

E’er you heard the like of that:

Pointed shoes of patent-leather

On a cat!

His time he used to pass Writing sonnets, on the grass—

(I might say something good on pen and sward!) While the cat sat near at hand, Trying hard to understand

The poems he occasionally roared.

(I myself possess a feline,

But when poetry I roar

He is sure to make a bee-line

For the door.)

[104]The poet, cent by cent, All his patrimony spent—

(I might tell how he went from werse to werse!) Till the cat was sure she could, By advising, do him good

So addressed him in a manner that was terse:

“We are bound toward the scuppers,

And the time has come to act,

Or we’ll both be on our uppers

For a fact!”

On her boot she fixed her eye, But the boot made no

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