Humor
Read books online » Humor » The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (important books to read txt) 📖

Book online «The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (important books to read txt) 📖». Author Marshall P. Wilder



1 ... 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Go to page:
on his ear.
The Orang-Outang
A sea-song sang,
About a Chimpanzee
Who went abroad,
In a drinking gourd,
To the coast of Barberee.
Where he heard one night,
When the moon shone bright,
A school of mermaids pick
Chromatic scales
From off their tails,
And did it mighty slick.
"All guests are here,
To eat the cheer,
And dinner's served, my Lord."
The butler bowed;
And then the crowd
Rushed in with one accord.
The fiddler-crab
Came in a cab,[Pg 185]
And played a piece in C;
While on his horn,
The Unicorn
Blew, You'll Remember Me.
"To give a touch
Of early Dutch
To this great feast of feasts,
I'll drink ten drops
Of Holland's schnapps,"
Spoke out the King of Beasts.
"That must taste fine,"
Said the Porcupine,
"Did you see him smack his lip?"
"I'd smack mine, too,"
Cried the Kangaroo,
"If I didn't have the pip."
The Lion stood,
And said: "Be good
Enough to look this way;
Court Etiquette
Do not forget,
And mark well what I say:
My royal wish
Is ev'ry dish
Be tasted first by me."
"Here's where I smile,"
Said the Crocodile,
And he climbed an axle-tree.
The soup was brought,
And quick as thought,
The Lion ate it all.[Pg 186]
"You can't beat that,"
Exclaimed the Cat,
"For monumental gall."
"The soup," all cried.
"Gone," Leo replied,
"'Twas just a bit too thick."
"When we get through,"
Remarked the Gnu,
"I'll hit him with a brick."
The Tiger stepped,
Or, rather, crept,
Up where the Lion sat.
"O, mighty boss
I'm at a loss
To know where I am at.
I came to-night
With appetite
To drink and also eat;
As a Tiger grand,
I now demand,
I get there with both feet."
The Lion got
All-fired hot
And in a passion flew.
"Get out," he cried,
"And save your hide,
You most offensive You."
"I'm not afraid,"
The Tiger said,
"I know what I'm about."
But the Lion's paw
Reached the Tiger's jaw,
And he was good and out.[Pg 187]
The salt-sea smell
Of Mackerel,
Upon the air arose;
Each hungry guest
Great joy expressed,
And "sniff!" went every nose.
With glutton look
The Lion took
The spiced and sav'ry dish.
Without a pause
He worked his jaws,
And gobbled all the fish.
Then ate the roast,
The quail on toast,
The pork, both fat and lean;
The jam and lamb,
The potted ham,
And drank the kerosene.
He raised his voice:
"Come, all rejoice,
You've seen your monarch dine."
"Never again,"
Clucked the Hen,
And all sang Old Lang Syne.
[Pg 188] THE BILLVILLE SPIRIT MEETING BY FRANK L. STANTON
We had a sperrit meetin' (we'll never have no more!)
To call up all the sperrits of them that's "gone before."
A feller called a "medium" (he wuz of medium size),
Took the contract fer the fetchin' o' them sperrits from the skies.
The mayor—the town council—the parson an' his wife,
Come to shake han's with them sperrits what had left the other life;
The Colonel an' the Major—the coroner, an' all
Wuz waitin' an' debatin' in the darkness o' the hall.
The medium roared, "Silence! Amanda Jones appears!
Is her husband present?" ("No, sir—he's been restin' twenty years!")
"Here's the ghost of Sally Spilkins, from the lan' whar' glories glow:
Would her husband like to see her?" (An' a feeble voice said, "No!")
"Here's the wife of Colonel Buster; she wears a heavenly smile:
She wants to see the Colonel, an' she's comin' down the aisle!"
Then all wuz wild confusion—it warn't a bit o' fun!—
With "Lord, have mercy on me," the Colonel broke an' run![Pg 189]
Then the coroner got skeery an' scampered fer his life!
"Stop—stop him!" said the medium; "here comes his second wife!"
But thar' warn't a man could stop him in that whole blame settlement.—
He turned a double summersault an' out the winder went!
Then, the whole town council follered an' hollered all the way;
The parson said he had a call 'bout ten miles off, to pray!
He didn't preach nex' Sunday, an' they tell it roun' a bit,
Accordin' to the best reports the parson's runnin' yit!
[Pg 190] A CRY FROM THE CONSUMER BY WILBUR D. NESBIT
Grasshoppers roam the Kansas fields and eat the tender grass—
A trivial affair, indeed, but what then comes to pass?
You go to buy a panama, or any other hat;
You learn the price has been advanced a lot because of that.
A glacier up in Canada has slipped a mile or two—
A little thing like this can boost the selling price of glue.
Occurrences so tragic always thrill me to the core;
I hope and pray that nothing ever happens any more.
Last week the peaceful Indians went a-searching after scalps,
And then there was an avalanche 'way over in the Alps;
These diametric happenings seem nothing much, but look—
We had to add a dollar to the wages of the cook.
The bean-crop down at Boston has grown measurably less,
And so the dealer charges more for goods to make a dress.
Each day there is some incident to make a man feel sore,
I'm on my knees to ask that nothing happens any more.
It didn't rain in Utah and it did in old Vermont—
Result: it costs you fifty more to take a summer's jaunt;
Upon the plains of Tibet some tornadoes took a roll—
Therefore the barons have to charge a higher price for coal.[Pg 191]
A street-car strike in Omaha has cumulative shocks—
It boosted huckleberries up to twenty cents a box.
No matter what is happening it always finds your door—
Give us a rest! Let nothing ever happen any more.
Mosquitoes in New Jersey bite a magnate on the wing—
Result: the poor consumer feels that fierce mosquito's sting:
The skeeter's song is silenced, but in something like an hour
The grocers understand that it requires a raise in flour.
A house burns down in Texas and a stove blows up in Maine,
Ten minutes later breakfast foods in prices show a gain.
Effects must follow causes—which is what I most deplore;
I hope and pray that nothing ever happens any more.
A DISAPPOINTMENT BY JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
Her hair was a waving bronze, and her eyes
Deep wells that might cover a brooding soul;
And who, till he weighed it, could ever surmise
That her heart was a cinder instead of a coal!
[Pg 192] THE BRITISH MATRON BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life; but (not to suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation, before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western people class under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much well-defined self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything positively salient,[Pg 193] or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four-gun ship in time of peace; for, while you assure yourself that there is no real danger, you can not help thinking how tremendous would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold—nay, a hundredfold—better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind; but I have not found reason to suppose that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society, and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up.

You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose as this.

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow[Pg 194] into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial bond can not be held to include the three-fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of twenty-five years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into possession since they were pronounced one flesh?

THE TRAGEDY OF IT BY ALDEN CHARLES NOBLE
Alas for him, alas for it,
Alas for you and I!
When this I think I raise my mitt
To dry my weeping eye.
[Pg 195]
1 ... 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Go to page:

Free ebook «The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (important books to read txt) 📖» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment