The Wit of Women
Page 14
Wear his beaver, decidedly, so.
Now if some one will deign to be shepherd
To this “our peculiar people,”
Will be first to subscribe for a bell,
And help us to right up the steeple,
If correct in doctrinal points
(We’ve a committee of investigation),
If possessed of these requisite graces,
We’ll accept him perhaps on probation.
Then if two-thirds of the church can agree,
We’ll settle him here for life;
Now, we advertise, “Wanted, a Minister,”
And not a minister’s wife.
THE MIDDY OF 1881.
BY MAY CROLY ROPER.
I’m the dearest, I’m the sweetest little mid
To be found in journeying from here to Hades,
I am also, nat-u-rally, a prodid-
Gious favorite with all the pretty ladies.
I know nothing, but say a mighty deal;
My elevated nose, likewise, comes handy;
I stalk around, my great importance feel—
In short, I’m a brainless little dandy.
My hair is light, and waves above my brow,
My mustache can just be seen through opera-glasses;
I originate but flee from every row,
And no one knows as well as I what “sass” is!
The officers look down on me with scorn,
The sailors jeer at me—behind my jacket,
But still my heart is not “with anguish torn,”
And life with me is one continued racket.
Whene’er the captain sends me with a boat,
The seamen know an idiot has got ‘em;
They make their wills and are prepared to die,
Quite certain they are going to the bottom.
But what care I! For when I go ashore,
In uniform with buttons bright and shining,
The girls all cluster ‘round me to adore,
And lots of ‘em for love of me are pining.
I strut and dance, and fool my life away;
I’m nautical in past and future tenses!
Long as I know an ocean from a bay,
I’ll shy the rest, and take the consequences.
I’m the dearest, I’m the sweetest little mid
That ever graced the tail-end of his classes,
And through a four years’ course of study slid,
First am I in the list of Nature’s—donkeys!
—_Scribner’s Magazine Bric-a-Brac, 1881._
INDIGNANT POLLY WOG.
BY MARGARET EYTINGE.
A tree-toad dressed in apple-green
Sat on a mossy log
Beside a pond, and shrilly sang,
“Come forth, my Polly Wog—
My Pol, my Ly,—my Wog,
My pretty Polly Wog,
I’ve something very sweet to say,
My slender Polly Wog!
“The air is moist, the moon is hid
Behind a heavy fog;
No stars are out to wink and blink
At you, my Polly Wog—
My Pol, my Ly—my Wog,
My graceful Polly Wog;
Oh, tarry not, beloved one!
My precious Polly Wog!”
Just then away went clouds, and there
A sitting on the log—
The other end I mean—the moon
Showed angry Polly Wog.
Her small eyes flashed, she swelled until
She looked almost a frog;
“How dare you, sir, call me,” she asked,
“Your precious Polly Wog?
“Why, one would think you’d spent your life
In some low, muddy bog.
I’d have you know—to strange young men
My name’s Miss Mary Wog.”
One wild, wild laugh that tree-toad gave,
And tumbled off the log,
And on the ground he kicked and screamed,
“Oh, Mary, Mary Wog.
Oh, May! oh, Ry—oh, Wog!
Oh, proud Miss Mary Wog!
Oh, goodness gracious! what a joke!
Hurrah for Mary Wog!”
“KISS PRETTY POLL!”
BY MARY D. BRINE.
“Kiss Pretty Poll!” the parrot screamed,
And “Pretty Poll,” repeated I,
The while I stole a merry glance
Across the room all on the sly,
Where some one plied her needle fast,
Demurely by the window sitting;
But I beheld upon her cheek
A multitude of blushes flitting.
“Kiss Pretty Poll,” the parrot coaxed:
“I would, but dare not try,” I said,
And stole another glance to see
How some one drooped her golden head,
And sought for something on the floor
(The loss was only feigned, I knew)—
And still, “Kiss Poll,” the parrot screamed,
The very thing I longed to do.
But some one turned to me at last,
“Please, won’t you keep that parrot still?”
“Why, yes,” said I, “at least—you see
If you will let me, dear, I will.”
And so—well, never mind the rest;
But some one said it was a shame
To take advantage just because
A foolish parrot bore her name.
—_Harper’s Weekly._
THANKSGIVING-DAY (THEN AND NOW).
BY MARY D. BRINE.
Thanksgiving-day, a year ago,
A bachelor was I,
Free as the winds that whirl and blow,
Or clouds that sail on high:
I smoked my meerschaum blissfully,
And tilted back my chair,
And on the mantel placed my feet,
For who would heed or care?
The fellows gathered in my room
For many an hour of fun,
Or I would meet them at the club
For cards, till night was done.
I came or went as pleased me best,
Myself the first and last.
One year ago! Ah, can it be
That freedom’s age is past?
Now, here’s a note just come from Fred:
“Old fellow, will you dine
With me to-day? and meet the boys,
A jolly number—nine?”
Ah, Fred is quite as free to-day
As just a year ago,
And ignorant, happily, I may say,
Of things I’ve learned to know.
I’d like, yes, if the truth were known,
I’d like to join the boys,
But then a Benedick must learn
To cleave to other joys.
So, here’s my answer: “Fred, old chum,
I much regret—oh, pshaw!
To tell the truth, I’ve got to dine
With—_my dear mother-in-law!_”
—_Harper’s Weekly._
CONCERNING MOSQUITOES.
Feelingly Dedicated to their Discounted Bills.
BY MISS ANNA A. GORDON.
Skeeters have the reputation
Of continuous application
To their poisonous profession;
Never missing nightly session,
Wearing out your life’s existence
By their practical persistence.
Would I had the power to veto
Bills of every mosquito;
Then I’d pass a peaceful summer,
With no small nocturnal hummer
Feasting on my circulation,
For his regular potation.
Oh, that rascally mosquito!
He’s a fellow you must see to;
Which you can’t do if you’re napping,
But must evermore be slapping
Quite promiscuous on your features;
For you’ll seldom hit
the creatures.
But the thing most aggravating
Is the cool and calculating
Way in which he tunes his harpstring
To the melody of sharp sting;
Then proceeds to serenade you,
And successfully evade you.
When a skeeter gets through stealing,
He sails upward to the ceiling,
Where he sits in deep reflection
How he perched on your complexion,
Filled with solid satisfaction
At results of his extraction.
Would you know, in this connection,
How you may secure protection
For yourself and city cousins
From these bites and from these buzzin’s?
Show your sense by quickly getting
For each window—skeeter netting.
THE STILTS OF GOLD.
BY METTA VICTORIA VICTOR.
Mrs. Mackerel sat in her little room,
Back of her husband’s grocery store,
Trying to see through the evening gloom,
To finish the baby’s pinafore.
She stitched away with a steady hand,
Though her heart was sore, to the very core,
To think of the troublesome little band,
(There were seven, or more),
And the trousers, frocks, and aprons they wore,
Made and mended by her alone.
“Slave, slave!” she said, in a mournful tone;
“And let us slave, and contrive, and fret,
I don’t suppose we shall ever get
A little home which is all our own,
With my own front door
Apart from the store,
And the smell of fish and tallow no more.”
These words to herself she sadly spoke,
Breaking the thread from the last-set stitch,
When Mackerel into her presence broke—
“Wife, we’re—we’re—we’re, wife, we’re—we’re rich!”
“We rich! ha, ha! I’d like to see;
I’ll pull your hair if you’re fooling me.”
“Oh, don’t, love, don’t! the letter is here—
You can read the news for yourself, my dear.
The one who sent you that white crape shawl—
There’ll be no end to our gold—he’s dead;
You know you always would call him stingy,
Because he didn’t invite us to Injy;
And I am his only heir, ‘tis said.
A million of pounds, at the very least,
And pearls and diamonds, likely, beside!”
Mrs. Mackerel’s spirits rose like yeast—
“How lucky I married you, Mac,” she cried.
Then the two broke forth into frantic glee.
A customer hearing the strange commotion,
Peeped into the little back-room, and he
Was seized with the very natural notion
That the Mackerel family had gone insane;
So he ran away with might and main.
Mac shook his partner by both her hands;
They dance, they giggle, they laugh, they stare;
And now on his head the grocer stands,
Dancing a jig with his feet in air—
Remarkable feat for a man of his age,
Who never had danced upon any stage
But the High-Bridge stage, when he set on top,
And whose green-room had been a green-grocer’s shop.
But that Mrs. Mac should perform so well
Is not very strange, if the tales they tell
Of her youthful days have any foundation.
But let that pass with her former life—
An opera-girl may make a good wife,
If she happens to get such a nice situation.
A million pounds of solid gold
One would have thought would have crushed them dead;
But dear they bobbed, and courtesied, and rolled
Like a couple of corks to a plummet of lead.
‘Twas enough the soberest fancy to tickle
To see the two Mackerels in such a pickle!
It was three o’clock when they got to bed;
Even then through Mrs. Mackerel’s head
Such gorgeous dreams went whirling away,
“Like a Catherine-wheel,” she declared next day,
“That her brain seemed made of sparkles of fire
Shot off in spokes, with a ruby tire.”
Mrs. Mackerel had ever been
One of the upward-tending kind,
Regarded by husband and by kin
As a female of very ambitious mind.
It had fretted her long and fretted her sore
To live in the rear of the grocery-store.
And several times she was heard to say
She would sell her soul for a year and a day
To the King of Brimstone, Fire, and Pitch,
For the power and pleasure of being rich.
Now her ambition had scope to work—
Riches, they say, are a burden at best;
Her onerous burden she did not shirk,
But carried it all with commendable zest;
Leaving her husband with nothing in life
But to smoke, eat, drink, and obey his wife.
She built a house with a double front-door,
A marble house in the modern style,
With silver planks in the entry floor,
And carpets of extra-magnificent pile.
And in the hall, in the usual manner,
“A statue,” she said, “of the chased Diana;
Though who it was chased her, or whether they
Caught her or not, she could, really, not say.”
A carriage with curtains of yellow satin—
A coat-of-arms with these rare devices:
“A mackerel sky and the starry Pisces—”
And underneath, in the purest fish-latin,
If fishibus flyabus
They may reach the skyabus!
Yet it was not in common affairs like these
She showed her original powers of mind;
Her soul was fired, her ardor inspired,
To stand apart from the rest of mankind;
“To be A No. one,” her husband said;
At which she turned very angrily red,
For she couldn’t endure the remotest hint
Of the grocery-store, and the mackerels in’t.
Weeks and months she plotted and planned
To raise herself from the common level;
Apart from even the few to stand
Who’d hundreds of thousands on which to revel.
Her genius, at last, spread forth its wings—
Stilts, golden stilts, are the very things—
“I’ll walk on stilts,” Mrs. Mackerel cried,
In the height of her overtowering pride.
Her husband timidly shook his head;
But she did not care—”For why,” as she said,
“Should the owner of more than a million pounds
Be going the rounds
On the very same grounds
As those low people, she couldn’t tell who,
They might keep a shop, for all she knew.”
She had a pair of the articles made,
Of solid gold, gorgeously overlaid
With every color of precious stone
Which ever flashed in the Indian zone.
She privately practised many a day
Before she ventured from home at all;
She had lost her girlish skill, and they say
That she suffered many a fearful fall;
But pride is stubborn, and she was bound
On her golden stilts to go around,
Three feet, at least, from the plebeian ground.
‘Twas an exquisite day,
In the month of May,
That the stilts came out for a p
romenade;
Their first entree
Was made on the shilling side of Broadway;
The carmen whistled, the boys went mad,
The omnibus-drivers their horses stopped.
The chestnut-roaster his chestnuts dropped,
The popper of corn no longer popped;
The daintiest dandies deigned to stare,
And even the heads of women fair
Were turned by the vision meeting them there.
The stilts they sparkled and flashed and shone
Like the tremulous lights of the frigid zone,
Crimson and yellow and sapphire and green,
Bright as the rainbows in summer seen;
While the lady she strode along between
With a majesty too supremely serene
For anything but an American queen.
A lady with jewels superb as those,
And wearing such very expensive clothes,
Might certainly do whatever she chose!
And thus, in despite of the jeering noise,
And the frantic delight of the little boys,
The stilts were a very decided success.
The creme de la creme paid profoundest attention,
The merchants’ clerks bowed in such wild excess,
When she entered their shops, that they strained their spines,
And afterward went into rapid declines.
The papers, next day, gave her flattering mention;
“The wife of our highly-esteemed fellow-citizen,
A Mackerel, of Codfish Square, in this city,
Scorning French fashions, herself has hit on one
So very piquant and stylish and pretty,
We trust our fair friends will consider it treason
Not to walk upon stilts, by the close of the season.”
Mrs. Mackerel, now, was never seen
Out of her chamber, day or night,
Unless her stilts were along—her mien
Was very imposing from such a height,
It imposed upon many a dazzled wight,
Who snuffed the perfume floating down
From the rustling folds of her gorgeous gown,
But never could smell through these bouquets
The fishy odor of former days.
She went on her golden stilts to pray,
Which never became her better than then,
When her murmuring lips were heard to say,