Grimm Tales Made Gay by Guy Wetmore Carryl (e textbook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Guy Wetmore Carryl
Book online «Grimm Tales Made Gay by Guy Wetmore Carryl (e textbook reader TXT) 📗». Author Guy Wetmore Carryl
crime:—
I’ve tried my best, and for that name
I can’t find any rhyme!
Yet spare me from remarks injurious:
I will not leave you foiled and furious.
If something must proclaim the answer,
And I cannot, the title can, sir!
[52]The Moral is: All said and done,
There’s nothing new beneath the sun,
And many times before, a title
Was incapacity’s requital!
Uncommonly Sore
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[53]How Jack Made the GiantsUncommonly Sore
Of all the ill-fated
Boys ever created
Young Jack was the wretchedest lad:
An emphatic, erratic,
Dogmatic fanatic
Was foisted upon him as dad!
From the time he could walk,
And before he could talk,
His wearisome training began,
On a highly barbarian,
Disciplinarian,
Nearly Tartarean
Plan!
[54]He taught him some Raleigh,
And some of Macaulay,
Till all of “Horatius” he knew,
And the drastic, sarcastic,
Fantastic, scholastic
Philippics of “Junius,” too.
He made him learn lots
Of the poems of Watts,
And frequently said he ignored,
On principle, any son’s
Title to benisons
Till he’d learned Tennyson’s
“Maud.”
“For these are the giants
Of thought and of science,”
He said in his positive way:
“So weigh them, obey them,
Display them, and lay them
To heart in your infancy’s day!”
Jack made no reply,
But he said on the sly
An eloquent word, that had come
From a quite indefensible,
Most reprehensible,
But indispensable
Chum.
[55] By the time he was twenty
Jack had such a plenty
Of books and paternal advice,
Though seedy and needy,
Indeed he was greedy
For vengeance, whatever the price!
In the editor’s seat
Of a critical sheet
He found the revenge that he sought;
And, with sterling appliance of
Mind, wrote defiance of
All of the giants of
Thought.
He’d thunder and grumble
At high and at humble
Until he became, in a while,
Mordacious, pugnacious,
Rapacious. Good gracious!
They called him the Yankee Carlyle!
But he never took rest
On his quarrelsome quest
Of the giants, both mighty and small.
He slated, distorted them,
Hanged them and quartered them,
Till he had slaughtered them
All.
[56]And this is The Moral that lies in the verse:
If you have a go farther, you’re apt to fare worse.
(When you turn it around it is different rather:—
You’re not apt to go worse if you have a fair father!)
Were Justly Rewarded
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[57]How Rudeness and KindnessWere Justly Rewarded
Once on a time, long years ago
(Just when I quite forget),
Two maidens lived beside the Po,
One blonde and one brunette.
The blonde one’s character was mild,
From morning until night she smiled,
Whereas the one whose hair was brown
Did little else than pine and frown.
(I think one ought to draw the line
At girls who always frown and pine!)
The blonde one learned to play the harp,
Like all accomplished dames,
And trained her voice to take C sharp
As well as Emma Eames;
Made baskets out of scented grass,
And paper-weights of hammered brass,
And lots of other odds and ends
For gentleman and lady friends.
(I think it takes a deal of sense
To manufacture gifts for gents!)
[58] The dark one wore an air of gloom,
Proclaimed the world a bore,
And took her breakfast in her room
Three mornings out of four.
With crankiness she seemed imbued,
And everything she said was rude:
She sniffed, and sneered, and, what is more,
When very much provoked, she swore!
(I think that I could never care
For any girl who’d learned to swear!)
One day the blonde was striding past
A forest, all alone,
When all at once her eyes she cast
Upon a wrinkled crone,
Who tottered near with shaking knees,
And said: “A penny, if you please!”
And you will learn with some surprise
This was a fairy in disguise!
(I think it must be hard to know
A fairy who’s incognito!)
[59] The maiden filled her trembling palms
With coinage of the realm.
The fairy said: “Take back your alms!
My heart they overwhelm.
Henceforth at every word shall slip
A pearl or ruby from your lip!”
And, when the girl got home that night,—
[60] She found the fairy’s words were right!
(I think there are not many girls
Whose words are worth their weight in pearls!)
[61] It happened that the cross brunette,
Ten minutes later, came
Along the self-same road, and met
That bent and wrinkled dame,
Who asked her humbly for a sou.
The girl replied: “Get out with you!”
The fairy cried: “Each word you drop,
A toad from out your mouth shall hop!”
(I think that nothing incommodes
One’s speech like uninvited toads!)
And so it was, the cheerful blonde
Lived on in joy and bliss,
And grew pecunious, beyond
The dreams of avarice!
And to a nice young man was wed,
And I have often heard it said
No other man who ever walked
Most loved his wife when most she talked!
(I think this very fact, forsooth,
Goes far to prove I tell the truth!)
[62] The cross brunette the fairy’s joke
By hook or crook survived,
But still at every word she spoke
An ugly toad arrived,
Until at last she had to come
To feigning she was wholly dumb,
Whereat the suitors swarmed around,
And soon a wealthy mate she found.
(I think nobody ever knew
The happier husband of the two!)
The Moral of the tale is: Bah!
Nous avons changé tout celà.
No clear idea I hope to strike
Of what your nicest girl is like,
But she whose best young man I am
Is not an oyster, nor a clam![63]
This shows why each suitor, who rode up to spark,
Would mark the toad maybe, but ne’er toed the mark.[64]
Square with the Beast
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[65]How Beauty Contrived to GetSquare with the Beast
Miss Guinevere Platt
Was so beautiful that
She couldn’t remember the day
When one of her swains
Hadn’t taken the pains
To send her a mammoth bouquet.
And the postman had found,
On the whole of his round,
That no one received such a lot
Of bulky epistles
As, waiting his whistles,
The beautiful Guinevere got!
[66]
A significant sign
That her charm was divine
Was seen in society, when
The chaperons sniffed
With their eyebrows alift:
“Whatever’s got into the men?”
There was always a man
Who was holding her fan,
And twenty that danced in details,
And a couple of mourners,
Who brooded in corners,
And gnawed their mustaches and nails.
[67]John Jeremy Platt
Wouldn’t stay in the flat,
For his beautiful daughter he missed:
When he’d taken his tub,
He would hie to his club,
And dally with poker or whist.
At the end of a year
It was perfectly clear
That he’d never computed the cost,
For he hadn’t a penny
To settle the many
Ten thousands of dollars he’d lost!
F. Ferdinand Fife
Was a student of life:
He was coarse, and excessively fat,
With a beard like a goat’s,
But he held all the notes
Of ruined John Jeremy Platt!
With an adamant smile
That was brimming with guile,
He said: “I am took with the face
Of your beautiful daughter,
And wed me she ought ter,
To save you from utter disgrace!”
[68]Miss Guinevere Platt
Didn’t hesitate at
Her duty’s imperative call.
When they looked at the bride
All the chaperons cried:
“She isn’t so bad, after all!”
Of the desolate men
There were something like ten
Who took up political lives,
And the flower of the flock
Went and fell off a dock,
And the rest married hideous wives!
[69]But the beautiful wife
Of F. Ferdinand Fife
Was the wildest that ever was known:
She’d grumble and glare,
Till the man didn’t dare
To say that his soul was his own.
She sneered at his ills,
And quadrupled his bills,
And spent nearly twice what he earned;
Her husband deserted,
And frivoled, and flirted,
Till Ferdinand’s reason was turned.
[70]He repented too late,
And his terrible fate
Upon him so heavily sat,
That he swore at the day
When he sat down to play
At cards with John Jeremy Platt.
He was dead in a year,
And the fair Guinevere
In society sparkled again,
While the chaperons fluttered
Their fans, as they muttered:
“She’s getting exceedingly plain!”
The Moral: Predicaments often are found
That beautiful duty is apt to get round:
But greedy extortioners better beware
For dutiful beauty is apt to get square!
[71]
This shows how at poker one loses his pelf
When the other’s a joker and knave in himself.[72]
His Highness Accorded
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[73]How a Fair One no Hope toHis Highness Accorded
She has slid down the channels
Of history’s annals
Disguised as the child of a king,
But that is a glib
And iniquitous fib,
For she never was any such thing:
They called her the Fair One with Golden Locks,
And it’s true she had lovers who swarmed in flocks,
But the rest is ironic;
Her business chronic
Was selling hair-tonic
By bottle and box!
From the dawn till the gloaming
She used to sit combing
Her hair in a languorous way.
And her suitors would stop
To look into the shop,
And stand there the rest of the day.
She filled them with mute, but with deep despair,
For she never glanced up, with a smile, to where
They stood about, crushing
Each other, and blushing:
She simply kept brushing
Her beautiful hair.
[74] But a prince who was passing,
Engaged in amassing
Some facts on American life,
Was suddenly struck
By the fact that his luck
Might give him that girl for a wife!
His rashness he didn’t attempt to excuse,
He entered the shop and he stated his views.
Remarking,
“My jewel,
I’m confident you will
Not wish to be cruel
Enough to refuse.
[75] “Most winsome of creatures,”
He told her, “your features
Have led me to candidly say
That no other beside
Would I have for a bride:
We’ll be married a week from to-day!
I belong to a long and a titled line,
And the least of your wishes I won’t decline;
Next month I will usher
My wife into Russia:—
Sweet comber and brusher,
Consider you’re mine!”
She looked at him squarely,
Considered him fairly,
Her glance was as keen as a knife,
Then she turned up her nose,
And, with icy repose,
She answered: “Well, not on your life!
You’re not on the paper the only blot!
Do you think I come twelve in a parcel—what?
Me pose as your dearie?
Oh, go and chase Peary!
You’re making me weary.
Now git!”
[76](He got!)
[77]
This shows how, with never a shadow of doubt,
When you go in for love you are apt to come out.[78]
[79] The crowd that had waited
Outside was elated
So much by the prince’s mischance,
That they greeted with jeers
And ironical cheers,
The end of his little romance.
They said: “Did it hurt when the ground you hit?”
They searched for some mark where the prince had lit,
And as he looked colder,
They only grew bolder,
And tapped on his shoulder
With: “Tag! You’re It!”
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