To Alice-Sit-By-The-Hour

LADY in the blue kimono, you that live across the way,

One may see you gazing, gazing gazing all the livelong day,

Idly looking out your window from your vantage point above.

Are you convalescent, lady? Are you worse? Are you in love?

Ever gazing, as you hang there on the little window seat,

Into flats across the way or down upon the prosy street,

Can't you rent a pianola? Can't you iron, sew, or cook?

Write a letter, bake a pudding, make a bed or read a book?

Tell me of the fascination you indubitably find

In the "High Cash Cloe's!" man's holler in the hurdy-gurdy grind.

Are your Spanish castles blue prints? Are you waiting for a knight

To descend upon your fastness and to save you from your plight?

Lady in the blue kimono, idle mollycoddle dame,

Does your doing nothing never make you feel the blush of shame?

As you sit and stare and ditto, not a single thing to do,

Lady in the blue kimono, lady, how I envy you!

Franklin P. Adams

Baseball's Sad Lexicon

THESE are the saddest of possible words:

Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Trio of Bear-cubs, fleeter than birds,

Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double --

Words that are weighty with nothing but trouble:

Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Franklin P. Adams