A Clean Face

These amusing verses were requested by a reader. They are kindly supplied by a correspondent from an old picture book which has come down through the generations.

Oh, why must my face be washed so clean,

And scrubbed and drenched for Sunday,

When you very well know, as you’ve always seen,

‘Twill be dirty again on Monday.

My hair is stiff with the lathery soap

That behind my ears is dripping

And my smarting eyes I’m afraid to ope,

And my lips the suds are sipping.

They’re down my throat, and up my nose,

And to choke me you seem to be trying;

That I’ll shut my mouth you needn’t suppose,

For how can I keep from crying?

And you rub as hard as ever you can,

And your hands are hard to my sorrow;

No one shall wash me when I’m a man,

And I wish I were one tomorrow.

E. Leslie

No Bail

A man very much intoxicated was taken to the station.  “Why did you not bail him out?” inquired a bystander of a friend.  “Bail him out!” exclaimed the other.  “Why, you couldn’t pump him out.”

Youth and smoking

When girls stop going with young men who will not stop “going” with cigarets, it will be a sign that there will be many young men who will either go alone or that the consumption of cigarets will decrease.

Betty and the Bear

This poem has been requested as an old favorite recitation, the author is not known.

In a pioneer’s cabin out West, so they say,

A great big black grizzly trotted one day,

And seated himself on the hearth, and began

To lap the contents of a two-gallon pan

Of milk and potatoes—and excellent meal,

And then looked about to see what he could steal.

The lord of the mansion awoke from his sleep,

And hearing a racket, he ventured to peep,

Just out in the kitchen to see what was there

And was scared to behold a great grizzly bear,

So he screamed in alarm to his slumbering frau—

“There’s a b’ar in the kitchen as big’s a cow!”

“A what?”  “Why, a b’ar!”  “Well, murder him then!”

“Yes, Betty, I will, if you’ll first venture in.”

So Betty leaped up and the poker she seized,

While her man shut the door and against it he squeezed.

As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows,

Now on his forehead and now on his nose,

Her man through the keyhole kept shouting within—

“Well done, my brave Betty!  Now hit him ag’in!

Now rap on the ribs; now a knock on the snout;

Now poke with the poker and poke his eyes out!”

So, rapping and poking, poor Betty alone

At last laid Sir Bruno as dead as a stone.

Now when the old man saw the bear was no more,

He ventured to poke his own nose out the door

And there saw the grizzly stretched out on the floor;

Then off to the neighbors he hastened, to tell

All the wonderful things that that morning befell;

And he published the marvelous story afar

How “Me and my Betty just slaughtered a b’ar!

Oh, yes, come and see; all the neighbors have sid it—

Come and see what we did, Me and Betty, We did it!”

Had His Uses

“You don’t make very good music with that instrument,” said a bystander to the man with the bass drum, as the band ceased to play.

“No,” admitted the pounder of the drum, “I know I don’t; but I drown a heap of bad music.”

Around the Town

Mrs. Smith, who lives at 13 Blank Street, asked her husband to take her to the Majestic.  He, liking the feel of slippers on his feet and entertaining the average male’s aversion for being elevated by grand opera demurred, whereupon his spouse declared loudly and irritably that he was a dull stay-at-home and she wished that she never had married him.  Magnolia, the maid, bringing in the joint, overheard and retailed the item over the back fence to the kitchen mechanic who worked for Mrs. Brown, in No. 15, who in turn communicated it to her mistress, slightly embellished.  Mrs. Brown lost little time in calling up Mrs. Jenks, who lived at No. 23, and telling her that Mrs. Smith had had a row with her husband and was going to leave him.  Four other women on the party line listened in.  By the time the tidings reached No. 99, Mrs. Smith had slammed the door in her better half’s face and eloped with the iceman.  Neighborly tongues can make mountain ranges out of infinitely less than mole hills.

-       The Wanderer

The Homeliest Woman

The milliners had advertised

A hundred dollar bill

For the homeliest woman they could find,

On which to try their skill.

The ad was read the selfsame day

By Miss Belinda Ann;

Quoth she, “I’ll qualify for this,

If anybody can!”

Her face, the judges all agreed,

Exceeded expectation!

But with their fabrics, lines, and shades,

Came beauty’s combination.

Two days she gladly lent herself,

Disdaining quip and laughter,

To demonstrate the difference

Between before and after.

While yet transformed with wondrous art,

They led her to the till.

There in her eager fingers placed

Her hundred dollar bill.

They wished her well, but cautioned low,

“Beware, Belinda Ann;

Remember how susceptible

Is poor defenseless man!”

Belinda beamed and went her way,

A purpose in her eye;

“No fault of mine, their broken hearts,”

She murmured with a sight.

As Jabez Johnson raised his head,

He gaped in admiration;

“Why, bless my soul, Belinda Ann,

You’re sweet as all creation!”

She bowed and smiled coquettishly,

As other beauties do,

While from her careless finger tips,

The bill peeped into view.

Then Jabez dropped upon his knees,

Quite as he should have done;

And soon before a magistrate

The twain were made as one.

Next morning at the stroke of 6,

Belinda Ann arose;

“It’s wise to feed the creatures well,

As every woman knows.”

The scent of coffee, amber clear,

Crisp bacon filled the air;

The bridegroom sniffed his wholesome food

And hurried to his chair.

“Now eat your breakfast while it’s hot;

What are you staring at?”

He clasped his brow and wildly cried,

“Great Scott!  Put on your hat!”

-       Selected

The Sky is the Limit

A London man who is asking subscriptions for a certain very worthy cause happened to include a New York acquaintance in his appeal.  The reply follows:

Dear Sir:--I have your letter requesting a donation for what you consider a very worthy cause.  I flatter myself that I have a spirit of loyalty and generosity.  I have contributed to each and every object that has been presented to me, but I certainly have to decline to help in this cause for the following reasons:

I have been held up, held down, sandbagged, walked on, sat on, spat on, rolled over, flattened out and squeezed, first by the United States government for the Federal war tax, the excess profits tax, the Liberty Loan Bonds and the bonds of matrimony; in the state of New York for the state tax, the highway tax, the income tax, surtax, the auto tax, school tax, dog tax, cat tax and syntax.  I have been held down to brass tacks by every society and organization that the mind of man can invent to attract what you have or may not have, from the Society of St. John the Baptist, the G. A. R., the Women’s Relief Corps, the men’s relief, the stomach relief, the wifeless, the husbandless, the childless, the conscienceless, the Navy League, the Belgian Baby League, the Red Cross, the Green Cross, the double cross and every other cross of all colors, and by the Children’s Home, the Dorcas Society, the various hospitals, including the lying-in hospital, the lying-out hospital, as well as some other lying institutions.

My income has decreased in volume owing to government restrictions and persecutions of properties I am interested in, and because I will not sell all that and have to go to beg, borrow and steal, I have been cussed, boycotted, talked about, lied to and about, held up, hung up, robbed and nearly ruined, and the only reason I am clinging to life is my curiosity to see what in hell is coming next.—Yours truly, New York.

Any Kind o’ Boy

I don’t know whether I was good,

I meant to be, I said I would;

But auntie watched me all the way.

“Now don’t to this, or that!” she’d say

Before I had a chance to be

Jus’ any kind o’ boy, you see!

If she had given me a chance,

I might ‘a led her such a dance,

An’ been as bad as I knew how,

An’ cut up—made an awful row!

An’ then again I might ‘a tried

To make her stretch her eyes as wide,

An’ wonder boys could be so good!

I thought o’ that, an’ thought I would;

But she jus’ watched me all the way,

An’ “Don’t do this, or that!” she’d say.

I wish I’d had a chance to be

Jus’ any kind o’ boy, you see!

            - Jessie And[cut off]

Rejoice

It ain’t no use to grumble or complain;

It’s just as cheap and easy to rejoice;

When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,

Why, rain’s my choice!

-       Anon.

This Is Uncanny

Are figures clairvoyants?  This looks like it.

• Put down the number of your living brothers.
• Multiply by two.  Add three.  Multiply the results by five.
• Now add the number of your living sisters.  Multiply the total by ten.
• Add the number of your dead brothers and sisters.  Subtract 150 from the total.
• The right hand figure will be the number of deaths, the middle figure the number of living sisters and the left hand figure the number of living brothers.[1]

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[1] When Clare first worked this through—doubtless she did—she was probably 15.  Her calculations would have looked like this:

                6 living brothers (Bay, George, John, Oz, Lew, and Graham)

* 2 = 12

+ 3 = 15

* 5 = 75

+ 2 living sisters (Bertha, Nita) = 77

* 10 = 770

+ 1 dead sibling (Edward) = 771

- 150 = 621

Try it yourself…it works!

Weeping and laughing

Some women derive as much pleasure from weeping as some men do from laughing.

Works

There are several ways of doing things 

As everyone supposes

Some folks turn up their sleeves at work

And some—turn up their noses

-       Anon.

Ego

I looked ‘round the rim of the sky.

I looked and I wondered why,

Why God had horizoned the sky to be

Precisely swung ‘round the hub of Me.

-       Cooke[1] 

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[1] Edmund Vance Cooke, popularly known as “the poet laureate of childhood,” was born in 1866 in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada. He began working at 13-14 years old at the White Sewing Machine Co. factory and stayed there for 14 years. In 1893, he became a self-employed poet and lecturer. His first book of poems, A Patch of Pansies, came out the next year. Four years later, he married Lilith Castleberry; they had five children. He published at least 16 books of verse, as well as other books, but he is best known for his poem How Did You Die?  (Source: Representative Poetry Online – rpo.library.utoronto.ca)

Going to Church at Goldboro

Not long ago the fates decreed

That I must while away

A week or two in Stormont town

I enjoyed it every day.

In the early dawn I’d a rifle take

Alone I would sally forth

O’er mountain and glen I knew so well

And the trail that led to the north.

I pity the one who has never been

Alone in the silent wood

And list’ to the voices of nature speak

While they tell him of things that are good.

Then late in the day I’d wander back home

With a tired and hungry look

And the moose meat stew would a-vanishing go

Which our women know how to cook.

Then one day the word was passed around

That down at the neighboring town

Evangelist Strickland would preach that night

And some friends invited me down

A jolly carload there was of us all

With Captain Dickson at the wheel;

While Big Tim sat like a judge by his side

To keep her on even keel.

I brought up the rear with a couple of girls

And they surely treated me well

But killed I’d be with a certain sword

If one of their names I’d tell.

We arrived at church in ample time

And got nicely settled away

As Evangelist Strickland the pulpit took

And said: let us bow and pray.

A wonderful sermon we heard that night

Of Christ and His coming reign

But those who would enter the gates of gold

Must surely be born again.

I cannot tell of all he said

But the message was clear and plain

There’s only one way said he, ‘tis this:

Ye must be born again.

God’s coming soon to claim his own

With trumps and mighty shout

If not for him you’ll get in wrong

And your sins will find you out.

‘Tis hoped that many who heard his voice

From their evil will refrain

That his words have fallen on goodly ground

And that many were born again.

Trouble Your Head with Your Own Affairs

These interesting verses were lately sought through this column by an enquirer and a copy has been kindly supplied by a western reader.  She mentions the author as Eliza Cook,[1] whose name is a household word.

You all know the burden that hangs to my song,

Like the bell of Saint Paul’s ‘tis a common ding-dong,

I don’t go to college for classical tools,

For Apollo has now set up national schools.

Oh mine is a theme you can chant when you may,

Fit for every age, and for every day;

And if rich folks say, “Poor folks, don’t give yourselves airs,”

Bid them trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Bid them trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Bid them trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Oh, how hard it appears to leave others alone,

And those with most sin often cast the first stone;

What missiles we scatter wherever we pass,

Tho’ our own walls are formed of most delicate glass;

Faults and errors chock up like a snowstorm, I ween,

But we each have a door of our own to keep clean;

And ‘twould save us a vast many squabbles and cares,

If we’d trouble our heads with our own affairs.

If we’d etc.

The “Browns” spend the bettermost part of the day

Watching the “Greens” who live over the way;

They knew about this and they know about that,

And can tell Mister Green when he has a new hat.

Mrs. Brown finds that Mrs. Green’s never at home.

Mrs. Brown doubts how Mrs. Green’s money can come;

Mrs. Brown’s youngest child tumbles downstairs

Through not troubling her head with her own affairs

Through not etc.

Figgins, the grocer, with sapient frown,

Is forsaking his counter to go to the “Crown;”

With his grog and his politics, mighty and big,

He raves like a Tory, or swears like a Whig;

He discusses the Church, Constitution, and State

Till his creditors also get up a debate,

And a plum of rich color is lost to his heirs

Through not troubling himself with his own affairs.

Through etc.

Let a symptom of wooing or weeding be found,

And full soon the impertinent whisper goes round;

The fortune, the beauty, the means, and the ends

Are all carefully weighted by our good-natured friends;

‘Tis a chance if the lady be perfectly right—

She must be a flirt if she be not a fright;

And how pleasant ‘twould be if the meddlesome dears

Would but trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Would but etc.

We are busy in helping the far-away slaves;

We must cherish the Turk, for he’s foreign and brave;

But methinks there are those in our own famous land

Whose cheeks may be fattened by charity’s hand;

We must interfere with all other men’s creeds,

From the Brahmin’s white bull, to the string of prayer-beads;

But a wise exhortation in Christian Prayers

Would be “Trouble your heads with your own affairs.”

Would be etc.

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[1] Eliza Cook was born in 1818 in London Road, Southwark to a local tradesman and his wife. She attended the local Sunday Schools and was encouraged by the son of the music master to produce her first volume of poetry. From this she took confidence; in 1835 while only seventeen years of age she published her first volume titled Lays of a Wild Harp. In 1837 she began to offer verse to the radical Weekly Dispatch, then edited by William Johnson Fox. She was a staple of its pages for the next ten years. She also offered material to The Literary Gazette, Metropolitan Magazine and New Monthly. In 1838 Eliza published Melaia and other Poems. From 1849 to 1854 she wrote, edited, and published Eliza Cook’s Journal, a weekly periodical she described as one of “utility and amusement.” Cook also published Jottings from my Journal (1860), and New Echoes (1864); in 1863 she was given a Civil List pension income of £100 a year.

Her work for the Dispatch and New Monthly was later pirated by George Julian Harney, the Chartist, for the Northern Star. Familiar with the London Chartist movement, in its various sects, she followed many of the older radicals in disagreeing with the O’Brienites and O’Connorites in their disregard for repeal of the Corn Laws. She also preferred the older Radicals’ path of Friendly Societies and self-education.

Her poem The Old Armchair (1838) made hers a household name for a generation, both in England and in America. Cook was a proponent of political and sexual freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of self-improvement through education, something she called “levelling up.” This made her a great favorite with the working-class public. Her works became a staple of anthologies throughout the century. She died in Wimbledon in 1889.

Wisdom

That is true wisdom, to know how to alter one’s mind when occasion demands it.

-       Terence[1]

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[1] Terence was born about 195 B.C. in Carthage. He was brought to Rome as a slave by Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator. His master freed him, and he became a Roman playwright. Terence based his comedy on the New Comedy of Menander. This style was the forerunner of the comedy of manners, used centuries later by Molière, Congreve, Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Wilde.

Production notices for his plays provide approximate dates:

·         Andria - 166 BC

·         Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law) - 165 BC

·         Heauton timoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor) - 163 BC

·         Eunuchus (The Eunuch) - 161 BC

·         Phormio - 161 BC

·         Adelphi (The Brothers) - 160 BC.

Terence’s plays were more refined than those of his contemporary, Plautus, which made him the less popular of the two. There was also controversy around Terence’s works; he was accused of contaminating the (borrowed, Greek) material and of having had assistance in the creation of his plays. Our main sources for information on Terence are the prologues to his plays, the production notices, biographical material written centuries later by Suetonius, and commentary written by Aelius Donatus, a fourth century grammarian.  Terence died either at sea or in Greece in about 159 B.C.  (Source: ancienthistory.about.com)

Sense and Looks

Sense is better than looks any time; but when sense and looks goes together, why then a woman is worth havin’.

-       Sam Slick[1]

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[1] Sam Slick was a character created by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, a Canadian judge and author. With his wry wit and Yankee voice, Sam Slick of Slicksville put forward his views on “human nature” in a regular column in the Novascotian, beginning in 1835. The twenty-one sketches were published in a collection titled The Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slicksville, First Series in 1836, supplemented by 12 unpublished or new sketches. The book was Canada's first international bestseller and was hugely popular, not only in Nova Scotia but also in Britain and the United States.

Slick’s wise-cracking commentary on the colonial life of Nova Scotia and relations with the U.S. and Britain struck a note with readers, leading to a second series in 1838 and a third in 1840. The satirical sketches, mocking both Canadians and Americans, made Haliburton one of the most popular writers of comic fiction in English of that era. The Clockmaker (which was also translated into German) established Haliburton as one of the founders of North American humour.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Rhyme of Rotundity

I don’t eat much for breakfast,

Rising early kills my appetite,

So for breakfast I take very little—

Just a bite—

A grapefruit cut in two and fixed with mounds

Of sugar, in each cut partition

And crimson cherries poised upon the halves

By my petition

And then a dish or two of white oatmeal

Drowned in cream

My milkman has the best of everything

That’s why I seem

To note the very small amount

I use of cream.

One dish of crispy flakes with sliced bananas

Will never make me fatter and it nourishes

And omelet—if you’ve ever tasted Anna’s—

That’s one reason why my health flourishes,

A tiny slice of ham, pink, cured, I think

Gives one’s palate a delicious kink.

Oh, I forgot to mention beverages—

What one drinks

Is quite important, my physician thinks.

One tiny sip of cream, two cups of coffee,

And one large glass of foamy buttermilk

So I describe

Plus two tall glasses of mineral water

What I imbibe.

I don’t eat much for breakfast,

Rising early kills my appetite,

So in the morning I take a very little—

Just a bite.[1]

            Vera V. Golden

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[1] This breakfast would provide approximately 2,128 calories.

A Dream

My dead love came to me, and said,

“God gives me one hour’s rest,

To spend with thee on earth again

How shall we spend it best?”

“Why, as of old,” I said; and so

We quarrell’d, as of old;

But, when I turned to make my peace,

That one short hour was told.[1]

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[1] This poem is by Stephen Phillips, the English poet and playwright. He was born in 1864 at Somertown near Oxford, son of the Rev. Stephen Phillips. He was educated at Stratford and Peterborough Grammar Schools, and entered Queens’ College, Cambridge, but during his first term, F. R. Benson’s dramatic company visited the town. He left school to join it, and for six years played various small parts.

In 1890 Stephen contributed to a volume of verse published at Oxford with the title Primavera. In 1896 appeared Christ in Hades, which arrested the attention of watchful critics of poetry. When it was followed by a collection of Poems in 1897 the writer’s position as a new poet of exceptional gifts was generally recognized. The volume won the prize of £100 offered by the Academy newspaper for the best new book of its year, ran through half a dozen editions in two years, and established Phillips’s rank as poet, which was sustained by the publication, in the Nineteenth Century in 1898 of his poem Endymion.

George Alexander, the actor-manager, then commissioned Phillips to write him a play, the result being Paolo and Francesca (1900), a drama founded on Dante’s famous episode. Encouraged by the great success of the drama in its literary form, Mr Alexander produced the piece at the St James’ Theatre in the course of 1901; it met with great success. Phillips continued to write dramas, with the aim of reviving the method of Greek drama. He achieved considerable popularity in his day. He passed away in 1915.  (Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1911 edition)