The Wit of Women

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-à-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 promenade;
Their first entrée
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 crême de la crême 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,
"Thank God, I am not as my fellow-men!"
Her pastor loved as a pastor might —
His house that was built on a golden rock;
He pointed it out as a shining light
To the lesser lambs of his fleecy flock.
The stilts were a help to the church, no doubt,
They kindled its self-expiring embers,
So that before the season was out
It gained a dozen excellent members.
 
 
Mrs. Mackerel gave a superb soirée,
Standing on stilts to receive her guests;
The gas-lights mimicked the glowing day
So well, that the birds, in their flowery nests,
Almost burst their beautiful breasts,
Trilling away their musical stories
In Mrs. Mackerel's conservatories.
She received on stilts; a distant bow
Was all the loftiest could attain —
Though some of her friends she did allow
To kiss the hem of her jewelled train.
One gentleman screamed himself quite hoarse
Requesting her to dance; which, of course,
Couldn't be done on stilts, as she
Halloed down to him rather scornfully.
 
 
The fact is, when Mackerel kept a shop,
His wife was very fond of a hop,
And now, as the music swelled and rose,
She felt a tingling in her toes,
A restless, tickling, funny sensation
Which didn't agree with her exaltation.
 
 
When the maddened music was at its height,
And the waltz was wildest – behold, a sight!
The stilts began to hop and twirl
Like the saucy feet of a ballet-girl.
And their haughty owner, through the air,
Was spin, spin, spinning everywhere.
Everybody got out of the way
To give the dangerous stilts fair play.
In every corner, at every door,
With faces looking like unfilled blanks,
They watched the stilts at their airy pranks,
Giving them, unrequested, the floor.
They never had glittered so bright before;
The light it flew in flashing splinters
Away from those burning, revolving centres;
While the gems on the lady's flying skirts
Gave out their light in jets and spirts.
Poor Mackerel gazed in mute dismay
At this unprecedented display.
"Oh, stop, love, stop!" he cried at last;
But she only flew more wild and fast,
While the flutes and fiddles, bugle and drum,
Followed as if their time had come.
 
 
She went at such a bewildering pace
Nobody saw the lady's face,
But only a ring of emerald light
From the crown she wore on that fatal night.
Whether the stilts were propelling her,
Or she the stilts, none could aver.
Around and around the magnificent hall
Mrs. Mackerel danced at her own grand ball.
 
 
"As the twig is bent the tree's inclined;"
This must have been a case in kind.
"What's in the blood will sometimes show – "
'Round and around the wild stilts go.
 
 
It had been whispered many a time
That when poor Mack was in his prime
Keeping that little retail store,
He had fallen in love with a ballet-girl,
Who gave up fame's entrancing whirl
To be his own, and the world's no more.
She made him a faithful, prudent wife —
Ambitious, however, all her life.
Could it be that the soft, alluring waltz
Had carried her back to a former age,
Making her memory play her false,
Till she dreamed herself on the gaudy stage?
Her crown a tinsel crown – her guests
The pit that gazes with praise and jests?
 
 
"Pride," they say, "must have a fall – "
Mrs. Mackerel was very proud —
And now she danced at her own grand ball,
While the music swelled more fast and loud.
 
 
The gazers shuddered with mute affright,
For the stilts burned now with a bluish light,
While a glimmering, phosphorescent glow
Did out of the lady's garments flow.
And what was that very peculiar smell?
Fish, or brimstone? no one could tell.
Stronger and stronger the odor grew,
And the stilts and the lady burned more blue;
'Round and around the long saloon,
While Mackerel gazed in a partial swoon,
She approached the throng, or circled from it,
With a flaming train like the last great comet;
Till at length the crowd
All groaned aloud.
For her exit she made from her own grand ball
Out of the window, stilts and all.
 
 
None of the guests can really say
How she looked when she vanished away.
Some declare that she carried sail
On a flying fish with a lambent tail;
And some are sure she went out of the room
Riding her stilts like a witch a broom,
While a phosphorent odor followed her track:
Be this as it may, she never came back.
Since then, her friends of the gold-fish fry
Are in a state of unpleasant suspense,
Afraid, that unless they unselfishly try
To make better use of their dollars and sense
To chasten their pride, and their manners mend,
They may meet a similar shocking end.
 

– Cosmopolitan Art Journal.

JUST SO

BY METTA VICTORIA VICTOR

 
A youth and maid, one winter night,
Were sitting in the corner;
His name, we're told, was Joshua White,
And hers was Patience Warner.
 
 
Not much the pretty maiden said,
Beside the young man sitting;
Her cheeks were flushed a rosy red,
Her eyes bent on her knitting.
 
 
Nor could he guess what thoughts of him
Were to her bosom flocking,
As her fair fingers, swift and slim,
Flew round and round the stocking.
 
 
While, as for Joshua, bashful youth,
His words grew few and fewer;
Though all the time, to tell the truth,
His chair edged nearer to her.
 
 
Meantime her ball of yarn gave out,
She knit so fast and steady;
And he must give his aid, no doubt,
To get another ready.
 
 
He held the skein; of course the thread
Got tangled, snarled and twisted;
"Have Patience!" cried the artless maid,
To him who her assisted.
 
 
Good chance was this for tongue-tied churl
To shorten all palaver;
"Have Patience!" cried he, "dearest girl!
And may I really have her?"
 
 
The deed was done; no more, that night,
Clicked needles in the corner: —
And she is Mrs. Joshua White
That once was Patience Warner.
 

THE INVENTOR'S WIFE

BY E.T. CORBETT

 
It's easy to talk of the patience of Job. Humph! Job had nothin' to try him;
Ef he'd been married to 'Bijah Brown, folks wouldn't have dared come nigh him.
Trials, indeed! Now I'll tell you what – ef you want to be sick of your life,
Jest come and change places with me a spell, for I'm an inventor's wife.
And sech inventions! I'm never sure when I take up my coffee-pot,
That 'Bijah hain't been "improvin'" it, and it mayn't go off like a shot.
Why, didn't he make me a cradle once that would keep itself a-rockin',
And didn't it pitch the baby out, and wasn't his head bruised shockin'?
And there was his "patent peeler," too, a wonderful thing I'll say;
But it hed one fault – it never stopped till the apple was peeled away.
As for locks and clocks, and mowin' machines, and reapers, and all such trash,
Why, 'Bijah's invented heaps of them, but they don't bring in no cash!
Law! that don't worry him – not at all; he's the aggravatinest man —
He'll set in his little workshop there, and whistle and think and plan,
Inventin' a Jews harp to go by steam, or a new-fangled powder-horn,
While the children's goin' barefoot to school, and the weeds is chokin' our corn.
When 'Bijah and me kep' company, he wasn't like this, you know;
Our folks all thought he was dreadful smart – but that was years ago.
He was handsome as any pictur' then, and he had such a glib, bright way —
I never thought that a time would come when I'd rue my weddin'-day;
But when I've been forced to chop the wood, and tend to the farm beside,
And look at 'Bijah a-settin' there, I've jest dropped down and cried.
We lost the hull of our turnip crop while he was inventin' a gun,
But I counted it one of my marcies when it bust before 'twas done.
So he turned it into a "burglar alarm." It ought to give thieves a fright —
'Twould scare an honest man out of his wits, ef he sot it off at night.
Sometimes I wonder ef 'Bijah's crazy, he does such curious things.
Have I told you about his bedstead yit? 'Twas full of wheels and springs;
It hed a key to wind it up, and a clock-face at the head;
All you did was to turn them hands, and at any hour you said
That bed got up and shook itself, and bounced you on the floor,
And then shet up, jest like a box, so you couldn't sleep any more.
Wa'al, 'Bijah he fixed it all complete, and he sot it at half-past five,
But he hadn't more 'n got into it, when – dear me! sakes alive!
Them wheels began to whizz and whirr! I heard a fearful snap,
And there was that bedstead with 'Bijah inside shet up jest like a trap!
I screamed, of course, but 'twant no use. Then I worked that hull long night
A-tryin' to open the pesky thing. At last I got in a fright:
I couldn't hear his voice inside, and I thought he might be dyin',
So I took a crowbar and smashed it in. There was 'Bijah peacefully lyin',
Inventin' a way to git out agin. That was all very well to say,
But I don't believe he'd have found it out if I'd left him in all day.
Now, since I've told you my story, do you wonder I'm tired of life,
Or think it strange I often wish I warn't an inventor's wife?