Part I

Part II:


• After Hearing "Robin Hood"
• Maud Muller Mutatur
• The Carlyles
• If Amy Lowell had been James Whitcomb Riley
• If the Advertising Man had been Gilbert
• If the Advertising Man had been Praed, or Locker
• Georgie Porgie
• On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders
• To a Vers Librist
• How Do You Tackle Your Work?
• Recuerdo
• On Tradition
• Unshackled Thoughts on Chivalry, Romance, Adventure, Etc.
• Resulte Ridiculous
• Regarding (1) The U.S. and (2) New York
• Broadmindedness
• The Jazzy Bard
• Lines on and from "bartlett's Familiar Quotations"
• Thoughts in a Far Country
• When You Meet a Man from Your Own Home Town

  Part III

  Part IV

  Part V

After Hearing "Robin Hood"

THE songs of Sherwood Forest

  Are lilac-sweet and clear;

The virile rhymes of merrier times

  Sound fair upon mine ear.

Sweet is their sylvan cadence

  And sweet their simple art.

The balladry of the greenwood tree

  Stirs memories in my heart.

O braver days and elder

  With mickle valor dight,

How ye bring back the time, alack!

  When Harry Smith could write!

Maud Muller Mutatur

In 1909 toilet goods were not considered a serious matter and no special department of the catalogs were devoted to it. A few perfumes and creams were scattered here and there among bargain goods.

In 1919 an assortment of perfumes that would rival any city department store is shown, along with six pages of other toilet articles, including rouge and eyebrow pencils.


--From "How the Farmer Has Changed in a Decade: Toilet Goods," in Farm and Fireside's advertisement.

MAUD MULLER, on a summer's day,

Powdered her nose with Bon Sachet.

Beneath her lingerie hat appeared

Eyebrows and cheeks that were well veneered.

Singing she rocked on the front piazz,

To the tune of "The Land of the Sky Blue Jazz."

But the song expired on the summer air,

And she said, "This won't get me anywhere."

The Judge in his car looked up at her

And signalled "Stop!" to his brave chauffeur.

He smiled a smile that is known as broad,

And he said to Miss Muller, "Hello, how's Maud?"

"What sultry weather is this? Gee whiz!"

Said Maud. Said the Judge, "I'll say it is."

"Your coat is heavy. Why don't you shed it?

Have a drink?" said Maud. Said the Judge, "You said it."

And Maud, with the joy of bucolic youth,

Blended some gin and some French vermouth.

Maud Muller sighed, as she poured the gin,

"I've got something on Whittier's heroine."

"Thanks," said the judge, "a peppier brew

From a fairer hand was never knew."

And when the judge had had number 7,

Maud seemed an angel direct from Heaven.

And the judge declared, "You're a lvoely girl,

An' I'm for you Maudie, I'll tell the worl'."

And the judge said, "Marry me, Maudie dearie?"

And Maud said yes to the well known query.

And she often thinks, in her rustic way,

As she powders her nose with Bon Sachet,

"I never'n the world would a' got that guy,

If I'd waited till after the First o' July.

And of all glad words of prose or rhyme,

The gladdest are, "Act while there yet is time."

The Carlyles

[I was talking with a newspaper man the other day who seemed to think that the fact that Mrs. Carlyle threw a teacup at Mr. Carlyle should be given to the public merely as a fact. But a fact presented to the people without the proper--or even, if necessary, without the improper--human being to go with it does not mean anything and does not really become alive or caper about in people's minds. But what I want and what I believe most people want when a fact is being presented is one or two touches that will make natural and human questions rise in and play about like this: 'Did a servant see Mrs. Carlyle throw the teacup? Was the servant an English servant with an English imagination or an Irish servant with an Irish imagination? What would the fact have been like if Mr. Browning had been listening at the keyhole? Or Oscar Wilde, or Punch, or the Missionary Herald, or The New York Sun, or the Christian Science Monitor?"--GERALD STANLEY LEE in the Saturday Evening Post]

BY OUR OWN ROBERT BROWNING

AS a poet heart- and fancy-free--whole,

I listened at the Carlyle's keyhole;

And I saw, I, Robert Browning, saw,

Tom hurl a teacup at Jane's jaw.

She silent sat, nor tried to speak up

When came the wallop with the teacup--

A Cup not filled with Beaune or Clicquot,

But one that brimmed with Orange Pekoe.

"Jane Welsh Carlyle," said Thomas, bold,

"The tea you brewed for m' breakfast's cold!

I'm feeling low i' my mind; a thing

You know b' this time. Have at you!" . . . Bing!

And hurled, threw he at her the teacup;

And I wrote it, deeming it unique, up.

            *            *            *            *

BY OUR OWN OSCAR WILDE

   LADY LEFFINGWELL (coldly).--A full tea-cup! What a waste! So many good women and so little good tea.

   [Exit Lady Leffingwell]

            *            *            *            *

FROM OUR OWN "PUNCH"

   A MANCHESTER autograph collector, we are informed, has just offered £50 for the signature of Tea Carlyle.

            *            *            *            *

FROM OUR OWN "MISSIONARY HERALD"

   From what clouds cannot sunshine be distilled! When, in a fit of godless rage, Mr. Carlyle threw a teacup at the good woman he had vowed at the altar to love, honour, and obey, she smiled and the thought of China entered her head.

   Yesterday Mrs. Carlyle enrolled as a missionary, and will sail for the benighted land of the heathen tomorrow.

            *            *            *            *

FROM OUR OWN "NEW YORK SUN"

   Fortunate is MRS JANE WELSH CARLYLE to have escaped with her life, though if she had not, no American worthy of the traditions of Washington could simulate acute sorrow. MR. CARLYLE, wearied of the dilatory demands of the BAKERIAN War Department, properly took the law into his own strong hands.

   The argument that resulted in the teacup's leaving MR. CARLYLE'S hands was common in most households. It transpires that MRS. CARLYLE, with a Bolshevistic tendency that makes patriots wonder what the Department of Justice--to borrow a phrase from a newspaper cartoonist--thinks about, had begun championing the British-Wilson League of Nations, that league which will make ironically true our "E PLURIBUS UNUM"--one of many. Repeated efforts by MR. CARLYLE, in appeals to the Department of Justice, the Military Intelligence Division, and the City Government, were of no avail. And so MR. CARLYLE, like the red-blooded American he is, did what the authorities should have saved him from the embarrasing trouble of doing.

            *            *            *            *

FROM OUR OWN "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR"

   It is reported that Mr. Thomas Carlyle has thrown a teacup at Mrs. Carlyle, and much exaggerated and acrid comment has been made on this incident.

   If it had been a whiskey glass, or a cocktail glass, the results might have been fatal. In Oregon, which went dry in 1916, the number of women hit by crockery has decreased 4.3 per cent in three years. Of 1,844 women in Oregon hit by crockery in 1915, 1,802 were hit by glasses containing, or destined to contain, alcoholic stimulants. More than 94 per cent of these accidents resulted fatally. The remaining 22 women, hit by tea or coffee cups, are now happy, useful members of society.

If Amy Lowell Had Been James Whitcomb Riley

WHEN you came you were like red wine and honey,

And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

Now you are like morning bread--

Smooth and pleasant,

I hardly taste you at all, for I know your savour,

But I am completely nourished.

   --AMY LOWELL, in The Chimæra.

When I wuz courtin' Annie, she wuz honey an' red wine,

She made me feel all jumpy, did that ol' sweetheart o' mine;

Wunst w'en I went to Crawfordsville, on one o' them there trips,

I kissed her--an' the burnin' taste wuz sizzlin' on my lips.

An' now I've married Annie, an' I see her all the time,

I do not feel the daily need o' bustin' into rhyme.

An' now the wine-y taste is gone, fer Annie's always there,

An' I take her fer granted now, the same ez sun an' air.

But though the honey taste wuz sweet, an' though the wine wuz strong,

Yet ef I lost the sun an' air, I couldn't git along.

If the Advertising Man Had Been Gilbert

NEVER mind the slippery wet street--

The tire with a thousand claws will hold you.

Stop as quickly as you will--

Those thousand claws grip the road like a vise.

Turn as sharply as you will--

Those thousand claws take a steel-prong grip on the road to prevent a side skid.

You're safe--safer than anything else will make you--

Safe as you would be on a perfectly dry street.

And those thousand claws are mileage insurance too.

--From the Lancaster Tire and Rubber Company's advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post

Never mind if you find it wet upon the street and slippery;

   Never bother if the street is full of ooze;

Do not fret that you'll upset, that you will spoil your summer frippery,

   You may turn about as sharply as you choose.

For those myriad claws will grip the road and keep the car from skidding,

   And your steering gear will hold it fast and true;

Every atom of the car will be responsive to your bidding,

   AND those thousand claws are mileage insurance too--

         Oh, indubitably,

   Those thousand claws are mileage insurance too.

If the Advertising Man Had Been Praed, or Locker

"C'EST DISTINGUE," says Madame La Mode,

'Tis a fabric of subtle distinction.

For street wear it is superb.

The chic of the Rue de la Paix--

The style of Fifth Avenue--

The character of Regent Street--

All are expressed in this new fabric creation.

Leather-like, but feather-light--

It drapes and folds and distends to perfection.

And it may be had in dull or glazed,

Plain or grained, basket weave or moiréd surfaces!

--Advertisement of Pontine, in Vanity Fair.




"C'est distingue," says Madame La Mode.

Subtly distinctive as a fabric fair;

Nor Keats nor Shelley in his loftiest ode

Could thrum the line to tell how it will wear.




The flair, the chic, that is Rue de la Paix,

The style that is Fifth Avenue, New York.

The character of Regent Street in May--

As leather strong, yet light as any cork.

All these for her in this fair fabric clad.

(Light of my life, O thou my Genevieve!)

In surface dull or glazed it may be had--

In plain or grained, moiréd or basket weave.

Georgie Porgie

BY MOTHER GOOSE AND OUR OWN SARA TEASDALE

BENNIE'S kisses left me cold,

Eddie's made me yearn to die,

Jimmie's made me laugh aloud,--

But Georgie's made me cry.

Bennie sees me every night,

Eddie sees me every day,

Jimmie sees me all the time,--

But Georgie stays away.

On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders

WITH BOWS TO KEATS AND KEITH'S

["The World's Most Famous Shoulders"]

Then I felt like some watcher of the skies

  When a new planet swims into his ken,

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

  He stared at the Pacific--and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise--

  Silent upon a peak in Darien."

   "BEE" PALMER has taken the raw human--all too human--stuff of the underworld, with its sighs of sadness and regret, its mad merriment, its swift blaze of passion, its turbulent dances, its outlaw music, its songs of the social bandit, and made a new art product of the theatre. She is to the sources of jazz and the blues what François Villon was to the wild life of Paris. Both have found exquisite blossoms of art in the sector of life most removed from the concert room and the boudoir, and their harvest has the vigour, the resolute life, the stimulating quality, the indelible impress of daredevil, care-free, do-as-you-please lives of the picturesque men and women who defy convention. --From Keith's Press Agent.

MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of jazz,

And many goodly arms and shoulders seen

Quiver and Quake--if you know what I mean;

I've seen a lot, as everybody has.

Some plaudits got, while others got the razz.

But when I saw Bee Palmer, shimmy queen,

I shook--in sympathy--my troubled bean,

And said, "This is the utter razmatazz."

Then felt I like some patient with a pain

When a new surgeon swims into his ken,

Or like stout Brodie, when, with reeling brain,

He jumped into the river. There and then

I swayed and took the morning train

To Norwalk, Naugatuck, and Darien.

To a Vers Librist

"OH bard," I said, "your verse is free;

The shackles that encumber me,

The fetters that are my obsession,

Are never gyves to your expression.

"The fear of falsities in rhyme,

In metre, quantity, or time,

Is never yours; you sing along

Your unpremeditated song."

"Correct," the young vers librist said.

"Whatever pops into my head

I write, and have but one small fetter:

I start each line with a capital letter.

"But rhyme and metre--Ishkebibble!--

Are actually negligible.

I go ahead, like all my school,

Without a single silly rule."

Of rhyme I am so reverential

He made me feel quite inconsequential.

I shed some strongly saline tears

For bards I loved in younger years.

"If Keats had fallen for your fluff,"

I said, "he might have done good stuff.

If Burns had thrown his rhymes away,

His songs might still be sung to-day."

O bards of rhyme and metre free,

My gratitude goes out to ye

For all your deathless lines--ahem!

Let's see, now . . . What is one of them?

How Do You Tackle Your Work?

HOW do you tackle your work each day?

Are you scared of the job you find?

Do you grapple the task that comes your way

With a confident, easy mind?

Do you stand right up to the work ahead

Or fearfully pause to view it?

Do you start to toil with a sense of dread?

Or feel that you're going to do it?

You can do as much as you think you can,

But you'll never accomplish more;

If you're afraid of yourself, young man,

There's little for you in store.

For failure comes from the inside first,

It's there if we only knew it,

And you can win, though you face the worst,

If you feel that you're going to do it.

Success! It's found in the soul of you,

And not in the realm of luck!

The world will furnish the work to do,

But you must provide the pluck.

You can do whatever you think you can,

It's all in the way you view it.

It's all in the start you make, young man:

You must feel that you're going to do it.

How do you tackle your work each day?

With confidence clear, or dread?

What to yourself do you stop and say

When a new task lies ahead?

What is the thought that is in your mind?

Is fear ever running through it?

If so, just tackle the next you find

By thinking you're going to do it.

--From "A Heap o' Linin'," by Edgar A. Guest

I tackle my terrible job each day

With a fear that is well defined;

And I grapple the task that comes my way

With no confidence in my mind.

I try to evade the work ahead,

As I fearfully pause to view it,

And I start to toil with a sense of dread,

And doubt that I'm going to do it.

I can't do as much as I think I can,

And I never accomplish more.

I am scared to death of myself, old man,

As I may have observed before.

I've read the proverbs of Charley Schwab,

Carnegie, and Marvin Hughitt;

But whenever I tackle a difficult job,

O gosh! I hate to do it!

I try to believe in my vaunted power

With that confident kind of bluff,

But somebody tells me The Conning Tower

Is nothing but awful stuff.

And I take up my impotent pen that night,

And idly and sadly chew it,

As I try to write something merry and bright,

And I know that I shall not do it.

And that's how I tackle my work each day--

With terror and fear and dread--

And all I can see is a long array

Of empty columns ahead.

And those are the thoughts that are in my mind,

And that's about all there's to it.

As long as there's work, of whatever kind,

I'm certain I cannot do it.

Recuerdo

WE WERE very tired, we were very merry--

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

We lay on a hilltop underneath the moon;

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry--

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry,

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry,

We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

--EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, in Poetry.

I was very sad, I was very solemn--

I had worked all day grinding out a column.

I came back from dinner at half-past seven,

And I couldn't think of anything till quarter to eleven;

And then I red "Recuerdo," by Miss Millay,

And I said, "I'll bet a nickel I can write that way."

I was very sad, I was very solemn--

I had worked all day whittling out a column.

I said, "I'll bet a nickel I can chirp such a chant,"

And Mr. Geoffrey Parsons said, "I'll bet you can't."

I bit a chunk of chocolate and found it sweet,

And I listened to the trucking on Frankfort Street.

I was very sad, I was very solemn--

I had worked all day fooling with a column.

I got as far as this and took my verses in

To Mr. Geoffrey Parsons, who said, "Kid, you win."

And--not not that I imagine that anyone'll care--

I blew that jitney on a subway fare.

On Tradition

LINES PROVOKED BY HEARING A YOUNG MAN WHISTLING

NO carmine radical in Art,

I worship at the shrine of Form;

Yet open are my mind and heart

To each departure from the norm.

When Post-Impressionism emerged,

I hesitated but a minute

Before I saw, though it diverged,

That there was something healthy in it.

And eke when Music, heavenly maid,

Undid the chains that chafed her feet,

I grew to like discordant shade--

Unharmony I thought was sweet.

When verse divorced herself from sound,

I wept at first. Now I say: "Oh, well,

I see some sense in Ezra Pound,

And nearly some in Amy Lowell."

Yet, though I storm at every change,

And each mutation makes me wince,

I am not shut to all things strange--

I'm rather easy to convince.

But hereunto I set my seal,

My nerves awry, askew, abristling:

I'll never change the way I feel

Upon the question of Free Whistling.

Unshackled Thoughts on Chivalry, Romance, Adventure, Etc.

YESTERDAY afternoon, while I was walking on Worth Street,

A gust of wind blew my hat off.

I swore, petulantly, but somewhat noisily.

A young woman had been near, walking behind me;

She must have heard me, I thought.

And I was ashamed, and embarrassedly sorry.

So I said to her: "If you heard me, I beg your pardon."

But she gave me a frightened look

And ran across the street,

Seeking a policeman.

So I thought, Why waste five hours trying to versify the incident?

Verse libre would serve her right.

Results Ridiculous

("Humourists have amused themselves by translating famous sonnets into free verse. A result no less ridiculous would have been obtained if somebody had re-written a passage from 'Paradise Lost' as a rondeau." --George Soule in the New Republic)

               "PARADISE LOST"

SING, Heavenly Muse, in lines that flow

More smoothly than the wandering Po,

Of man's descending from the height

Of Heaven itself, the blue, the bright,

To Hell's unutterable throe.

Of sin original and the woe

That fell upon us here below

From man's pomonic primal bite--

               Sing, Heavenly Muse!

Of summer sun, of winter snow, Of future days, of long ago,

Of morning and "the shades of night,"

Of woman, "my ever new delight,"

Go to it, Muse, and put us Joe--

               Sing, Heavenly Muse!

   *   *   *   *   *

"THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER"

THE wedding guest sat on a stone,

He could not chose but hear

The mariner. They were there alone.

The wedding guest sat on a stone.

"I'll read you something of my own,"

Declared that mariner.

The wedding guest sat on a stone--

He could not chose but hear.

Regarding (1) the U.S. and (2) New York

BEFORE I was a travelled bird,

I scoffed, in my provincial way,

At other lands; I deemed absurd

All nations but these U.S.A.

And--although Middle-Western born--

Before I was a travelled guy,

I laughed at, with unhidden scorn,

All cities but New York, N.Y.

But now I've been about a bit--

How travel broadens! How it does!

And I have found out this, to wit:

How right I was! How right I was!

Broadmindedness

HOW narrow his vision, how cribbed and confined!

How prejudiced all of his views!

How hard is the shell of his bigoted mind!

How difficult he to excuse!

His face should be slapped and his head should be banged;

A person like that ought to die!

I want to be fair, but a man should be hanged

Who's any less liberal than I.

The Jazzy Bard

LABOR is a thing I do not like;

Workin's makes me want to go on strike;

Sittin' in an office on a sunny afternoon,

Thinkin o' nothin' but a ragtime tune.

'Cause I got the blues, I said I got the blues,

I got the paragraphic blues,

Been a'sittin' here since ha' pas' ten,

Bitin' a hole in my fountain pen;

Brain's all stiff in the creakin' joints,

Can't make up no wheezes on the fourteen points;

Can't think o' nothin' 'bout the end o' booze,

'Cause I got the para--, I said I got the paragraphic, I mean the column constructin' blues.

Lines on and from "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations"

("Sir: For the first time in twenty-three years 'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations' has been revised and enlarged, and under a separate cover we are sending you a copy of the new edition. We would appreciate an expression of opinion from you of the value of this work after you have had an ample opportunity of examining it." --THE PUBLISHERS)

OF making many books there is no end--

So Sancho Panza said, and so say I.

Thou wert my guide, philosopher and friend

When only one is shining in the sky.

Books cannot always please, however good;

The good is oft interred with their bones.

To be great is to be misunderstood,

The anointed soverign of sighs and groans.

The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,

I never write as funny as I can.

Remote, unfriendly, studious let me sit

And say to all the world, "This was a man!"

Go, lovely Rose, that lives its little hour!

Go, little booke! and let who will be clever!

Roll on! From yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moon and I could keep this up forever.

Thoughts in a Far Country

I RISE and applaud, in the patriot manner,

Whenever (as often) I hear

The palpitanat strains of "The Star Spangled Banner,"--

            I shout and cheer.

And also, to show my unbound devotion,

I jump to my feet with a "Whee!"

Whenever "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean"

            Is played near me.

My fervour's so hot and my ardour so searing--

I'm hoarse for a couple of days--

You've heard me, I'm positive, joyously cheering

            "The Marsailles"

I holler for "Dixie." I go off my noodle,

I whistle, I pound, and I stamp

Whenever an orchestra plays "Yankee Doodle,"

            Or "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp."

But if you would enter my confidence, reader,

Know that I'd go clean off my dome,

And madly embrace any orchestra leader

            For "Home, Sweet Home."

When You Meet a Man from Your Own Home Town

SING, O Muse, in treble clef,

A little song of the A.E.F.,

And pardon me, please, if I give vent

To something akin to sentiment.

But we have our moments Over Here

When we want to cry and we want to cheer;

And the hurrah feeling will not down

When you meet a man from your own home town.

It's many a lonesome, longsome day

Since you embarked from the U.S.A.,

And you met some men--it's a great big war--

From towns that you never had known before;

And you landed here, and your rest camp mate

Was a man from some strange and distant state.

Liked him? Yes; but you wanted to see

A man from the town where you used to be.

And then you went, by design or chance,

All over the well-known map of France;

And you yearned with a yearn that grew and grew

To talk with a man from the burg you knew.

And some lugubrious morn when

Your morale is batting about .110,

"Where are you from?" and you make reply,

And the O.D. warrior says, "So am I."

The universe wears a smiling face

As you spill your talk of the old home place;

You talk of the streets, and the home town jokes,

And you find that you know each other's folks;

And you haven't any more woes at all

Ad you both decide that the world is small--

A statement adding to its renown

When you meet a man from your own home town.

You may be among the enlisted men,

You may be a Lieut. or a Major-Gen.;

Your home may be up in the Chilkoot Pass,

In Denver, Col., or in Pittsfield, Mass.;

You may have come from Chicago, Ill.,

Buffalo, Portland, or Louisville--

But there's nothing, I'm gambling, can keep you down,

When you meet a man from your own home town.

            *   *   *   *   *

If you want to know why I wrote this pome,

Well . . . I've just had a talk with a guy from home.