Page 42 - Poetry-Books

paragraphs into a short sentence; hunted up slang and spattered it
about; and put the whole together in such an uncouth way that his
old teachers would have said a First Reader was what he needed.

He didn’t like to go with this. His heart began to fail.
So he borrowed a dozen postage-stamps and sent it in the mail.
He waited tremblingly. An answer came that very night,
Which said the editor had found the article all right.
He sent a check in payment, and he hinted, at the end,
That he’d take as much of that sort as the young man chose to send.
From that day forth the said young man has prospered more or less,
And he always tells his friends that a careful cultivation of bad taste,
total abstinence from college rhetoric, and a tight muzzling of the
genius that is in him, are the secrets of his success.

—(Century Magazine, 1882)

“Something Humorous”

It’s a terrible temptation, for of course I need the money,
But, take it altogether, can I possibly be funny?
Oh, I need not sit and meditate—he’d not have had to urge,
If he’d asked me for an epitaph, or begged me for a dirge!
The house-maid leaves next Monday, the cook week after next,
After all my frantic struggles to prevent their being vexed;
And Augustus—once he fancied that I could do nothing wrong—
Went sulking off, because, forsooth, the coffee was not strong!
The plumbers come to-morrow; an important pipe has burst.
Of the sum of human miseries, are plumbers not the worst?
I found two moths this morning on the largest easy-chair,
And another on the sofa—I assume they’re in the hair.
Talk of “little” cares and worries—why, there are no little things;
A wasp is not a large affair, but patience! how he stings!
Yet the world, which likes to laugh with us, or at us, gives a growl,
And hasn’t time to listen if one ventures on a howl.
Yet there is a way of howling which the public likes to hear—
Yes, I’ll seize my opportunity, the whole affair grows clear;
I will tell my tribulations as if each one were a joke,
And my welcome, like the house-maid’s young affections, is “bespoke.”

— Margaret Vandegrift (Century Magazine, 1884)

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