Guy Wetmore Carryl

Now don't go and say you'd a dim
Idea of these stories before,
For I've frankly confessed them from Grimm,
The monarch of magical lore:

And if, by repeating, I took
Your time, I will candidly vow
This moral (the last in the book)
Has never been published till now!


The Moral: The skeleton's Grimm,
But I have supplied the apparel,
So it's fifty per cent, of it Him,
And it's fifty per cent. of it Carryl.
But still (from the personal severing,
For it isn't my nature to grump,)
I acknowledge a measure of Levering
Levering-ed the whole of the lump!

Albeit wholly penniless,
Prince Charming wasn't any less
Conceited than a Croesus or a modern millionaire:
Though often in necessity,
No one would ever guess it. He
Was candidly insolvent, and he frankly didn't care!
Of the many debts he made
Not a one was ever paid,
But no one ever pressed him to refund the borrowed gold:
While he recklessly kept spending,
People gladly kept on lending,
For the fact they knew a title
Was requital
Twenty-fold!
(He lived in sixteen sixty-three,
This smooth unblushing article,
Since when, as far as I can see,
Men haven't changed a particle!)

In Charming's principality
There was a wild locality,
Composed of sombre forest, and of steep and frowning crags,
Of pheasant and of rabbit, too;
And here...

A poet had a cat.
There is nothing odd in that--
(I might make a little pun about the Mews!)
But what is really more
Remarkable, she wore
A pair of pointed patent-leather shoes.
And I doubt me greatly whether
E'er you heard the like of that:
Pointed shoes of patent-leather
On a cat!

His time he used to pass
Writing sonnets, on the grass--
(I might say something good on pen and sward!)
While the cat sat near at hand,
Trying hard to understand
The poems he occasionally roared.
(I myself possess a feline,
But when poetry I roar
He is sure to make a bee-line
For the door.)

The poet, cent by cent,
All his patrimony spent--
(I might tell how he went from werse to werse!...

She has slid down the channels
Of history's annals
Disguised as the child of a king,
But that is a glib
And iniquitous fib,
For she never was any such thing:
They called her the Fair One with Golden Locks,
And it's true she had lovers who swarmed in flocks,
But the rest is ironic;
Her business chronic
Was selling hair-tonic
By bottle and box!

From the dawn till the gloaming
She used to sit combing
Her hair in a languorous way.
And her suitors would stop
To look into the shop,
And stand there the rest of the day.
She filled them with mute, but with deep despair,
For she never glanced up, with a smile, to where
They stood about, crushing
Each other, and blushing:
She simply kept brushing
Her beautiful hair.

But...

A fisherman lived on the shore,
(It's a habit that fishers affect,)
And his life was a hideous bore:
He had nothing to do but collect
Continual harvests of seaweed and shells,
Which he stuck upon photograph frames,
To sell to the guests in the summer hotels
With the quite inappropriate names!

He would wander along by the edge
Of the sea, and I know for a fact
From the pools with a portable dredge
He would curious creatures extract:
And, during the season, he always took lots
Of tourists out fishing for bass,
And showed them politely impossible spots,
In the culpable way of his class.

It happened one day, as afar
He roved on the glistening strand,
That he chanced on a curious jar,
Which lay on a hummock of sand.
It was closed at ...

Matilda Maud Mackenzie frankly hadn't any chin,
Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in;
Her general form was German,
By which I mean that you
Her waist could not determine
To within a foot or two:
And not only did she stammer,
But she used the kind of grammar
That is called, for sake of euphony, askew.

From what I say about her, don't imagine I desire
A prejudice against this worthy creature to inspire.
She was willing, she was active,
She was sober, she was kind,
But she never looked attractive
And she hadn't any mind!
I knew her more than slightly,
And I treated her politely
When I met her, but of course I wasn't blind!

Matilda Maud Mackenzie had a habit that was droll,
She spent her morning seated on...

In days of old the King of Saxe
Had singular opinions,
For with a weighty battle-axe
He brutalized his minions,
And, when he'd nothing to employ
His mind, he chose a village,
And with an air of savage joy
Delivered it to pillage.

But what aroused within his breast
A rage well-nigh primeval
Was, most of all, his daughter, dressed
In fashion mediæval:
The gowns that pleased this maiden's eye
Were simple as Utopia,
And for a hat she had a high
Inverted cornucopia.

In all her life she'd never smiled,
Her sadness was abysmal:
The boisterous monarch found his child
Unutterably dismal.
He therefore said the prince who made
Her laughter from its shell come,
Besides in ducats being paid,
Might wed the girl, and welcome!

Miss Guinevere Platt
Was so beautiful that
She couldn't remember the day
When one of her swains
Hadn't taken the pains
To send her a mammoth bouquet.
And the postman had found,
On the whole of his round,
That no one received such a lot
Of bulky epistles
As, waiting his whistles,
The beautiful Guinevere got!

A significant sign
That her charm was divine
Was seen in society, when
The chaperons sniffed
With their eyebrows alift:
"Whatever's got into the men?"
There was always a man
Who was holding her fan,
And twenty that danced in details,
And a couple of mourners,
Who brooded in corners,
And gnawed their mustaches and nails.

John Jeremy Platt
Wouldn't stay in the flat,
For his beautiful daughter he mi...

The vainest girls in forty states
Were Gwendolyn and Gladys Gates;
They warbled, slightly off the air,
Romantic German songs,
And each of them upon her hair
Employed the curling tongs,
And each with ardor most intense
Her buxom figure laced,
Until her wilful want of sense
Procured a woeful waist:
For bound to marry titled mates
Were Gwendolyn and Gladys Gates.

Yet, truth to tell, the swains were few
Of Gwendolyn (and Gladys, too).
So morning, afternoon, and night
Upon their sister they
Were wont to vent their selfish spite,
And in the rudest way:
For though her name was Leonore,
That's neither there nor here,
They called her Cinderella, for
The kitchen was her sphere,
Save when the hair she had to do
Of Gwendolyn (and G...

A worthy couple, man and wife,
Dragged on a discontented life:
The reason, I should state,
That it was destitute of joys,
Was that they had a dozen boys
To feed and educate,
And nothing such patience demands
As having twelve boys on your hands!

For twenty years they tried their best
To keep those urchins neatly dressed
And teach them to be good,
But so much labor it involved
That, in the end, they both resolved
To lose them in a wood,
Though nothing a parent annoys
Like heartlessly losing his boys!

So when their sons had gone to bed,
Though bitter tears the couple shed,
They laid their little plan.
"Faut b'en que ça s'fasse. Quand même,"
The woman said, "J'en suis tout' blème."
"Ça colle!" observed the ...

Without the slightest basis
For hypochondriasis
A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung,
And with expression cynical
For half the day a clinical
Thermometer she held beneath her tongue.

Whene'er she read the papers
She suffered from the vapors,
At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan;
In every new and smart disease,
From housemaid's knee to heart disease,
She recognized the symptoms as her own!

She had a yearning chronic
To try each novel tonic,
Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm;
And from a homoeopathist
Would change to an hydropathist,
And back again, with stupefying calm!

The closets of her villa
Were full of sarsaparilla,
Ammonia, digitalis, bronchial troches, soda mint.
Restoratives ...

Of all the ill-fated
Boys ever created
Young Jack was the wretchedest lad:
An emphatic, erratic,
Dogmatic fanatic
Was foisted upon him as dad!
From the time he could walk,
And before he could talk,
His wearisome training began,
On a highly barbarian,
Disciplinarian,
Nearly Tartarean
Plan!

He taught him some Raleigh,
And some of Macaulay,
Till all of "Horatius" he knew,
And the drastic, sarcastic,
Fantastic, scholastic
Philippics of "Junius," too.
He made him learn lots
Of the poems of Watts,
And frequently said he ignored,
On principle, any son's
Title to benisons
Till he'd learned Tennyson's
"Maud."

"For these are the giants
Of thought and of science,"
He said in his positive way:
"S...

Most worthy of praise
Were the virtuous ways
Of Little Red Riding Hood's Ma,
And no one was ever
More cautious and clever
Than Little Red Riding Hood's Pa.
They never misled,
For they meant what they said,
And would frequently say what they meant,
And the way she should go
They were careful to show,
And the way that they showed her, she went.
For obedience she was effusively thanked,
And for anything else she was carefully spanked.

It thus isn't strange
That Red Riding Hood's range
Of virtues so steadily grew,
That soon she won prizes
Of different sizes,
And golden encomiums, too!
As a general rule
She was head of her school,
And at six was so notably smart
That they gave her a cheque
For reciting "The Wreck
O...

Fortunatus, a fisherman Dane,
Set out on a sudden for Spain,
Because, runs the story,
He'd met with a hoary
Mysterious sorcerer chap,
Who, trouble to save him,
Most thoughtfully gave him
A magical traveling cap.
I barely believe that the story is true,
But here's what that cap was reported to do.

Suppose you were sitting at home,
And you wished to see Paris or Rome,
You'd pick up that bonnet,
You'd carefully don it,
The name of the city you'd call,
And the very next minute
By Jove, you were in it,
Without having started at all!
One moment you sauntered on upper Broadway,
And the next on the Corso or rue de la Paix!

Why, it beat every journey of Cook's,
Knocked spots out of Baedeker's books!
He stepped from his doorway<...

Once on a time, long years ago
(Just when I quite forget),
Two maidens lived beside the Po,
One blonde and one brunette.
The blonde one's character was mild,
From morning until night she smiled,
Whereas the one whose hair was brown
Did little else than pine and frown.
(I think one ought to draw the line
At girls who always frown and pine!)

The blonde one learned to play the harp,
Like all accomplished dames,
And trained her voice to take C sharp
As well as Emma Eames;
Made baskets out of scented grass,
And paper-weights of hammered brass,
And lots of other odds and ends
For gentleman and lady friends.
(I think it takes a deal of sense
To manufacture gifts for gents!)

The dark one wore an air of gloom,
P...

In Germany there lived an earl
Who had a charming niece:
And never gave the timid girl
A single moment's peace!
Whatever low and menial task
His fancy flitted through,
He did not hesitate to ask
That shrinking child to do.
(I see with truly honest shame you
Are blushing, and I do not blame you.
A tale like this the feelings softens,
And brings the tears, as does "Two Orphans.")

She had to wash the windows, and
She had to scrub the floors,
She had to lend a willing hand
To fifty other chores:
She gave the dog his exercise,
She read the earl the news,
She ironed all his evening ties,
And polished all his shoes,
She cleaned the tins that filled the dairy,
She cut the claws of the canary,
And then, at night, with manner winsome,...

A man of kind and noble mind
Was H. Gustavus Hyde.
'Twould be amiss to add to this
At present, for he died,
In full possession of his senses,
The day before my tale commences.

One half his gold his four-year-old
Son Paul was known to win,
And Beatrix, whose age was six,
For all the rest came in,
Perceiving which, their Uncle Ben did
A thing that people said was splendid.

For by the hand he took them, and
Remarked in accents smooth:
"One thing I ask. Be mine the task
These stricken babes to soothe!
My country home is really charming:
I'll teach them all the joys of farming."

One halcyon week they fished his creek,
And watched him do the chores,
In haylofts hid, and, shouting, slid
Down sloping cellar doors:--
Beca...

An excellent peasant,
Of character pleasant,
Once lived in a hut with his wife.
He was cheerful and docile,
But such an old fossil
You wouldn't meet twice in your life.
His notions were all without reason or rhyme,
Such dullness in any one else were a crime,
But the folly pig-headed
To which he was wedded
Was so deep imbedded,
it touched the sublime!

He frequently stated
Such quite antiquated
And singular doctrines as these:
"Do good unto others!
All men are your brothers!"
(Of course he forgot the Chinese!)
He said that all men were made equal and free,
(That's true if they're born on our side of the sea!)
That truth should be spoken,
And pledges unbroken:
(Now where, by that token,
would most of us be?)<...