Uncle Jim

Clumb up beside of him

And squatted down by he.

Charles Farrar Browne (Artemus Ward).

A TRAGIC STORY

THERE lived a sage in days of yore,
And he a handsome pigtail wore;
But wondered much and sorrowed more,
Because it hung behind him.

He mused upon this curious case,

And swore he'd change the pigtail's place,
And have it hanging at his face,

Not dangling there behind him.

Says he, "The mystery I've found,—
I'll turn me round," he turned him round;
But still it hung behind him.

Then round and round, and out and in,
All day the puzzled sage did spin;
In vain-it mattered not a pin,-
The pigtail hung behind him.

And right and left, and round about,
And up and down, and in and out,
He turned; but still the pigtail stout
Hung steadily behind him.

And though his efforts never slack,
And though he twist and twirl and tack,
Alas! still faithful to his back,

The pigtail hangs behind him.

W. M. Thackeray.

The Jim-Jam King of the Jou-Jous

851

SONNET FOUND IN A DESERTED MAD HOUSE

OH that my soul a marrow-bone might seize!

For the old egg of my desire is broken,

Spilled is the pearly white and spilled the yolk, and

As the mild melancholy contents grease

My path the shorn lamb baas like bumblebees.
Time's trashy purse is as a taken token

Or like a thrilling recitation, spoken

By mournful mouths filled full of mirth and cheese.

And yet, why should I clasp the earthful urn?
Or find the frittered fig that felt the fast?

Or choose to chase the cheese around the churn?
Or swallow any pill from out the past?
Ah, no Love, not while your hot kisses burn
Like a potato riding on the blast.

Unknown.

THE JIM-JAM KING OF THE JOU-JOUS

AN ARABIAN LEGEND

Translated from the Arabic

FAR off in the waste of desert sand,
The Jim-jam rules in the Jou-jou land:
He sits on a throne of red-hot rocks,
And moccasin snakes are his curling locks;
And the Jou-jous have the conniption fits
In the far-off land where the Jim-jam sits-
If things are now as things were then.
Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen!

The country's so dry in Jou-jou land
You could wet it down with Sahara sand,

And over its boundaries the air

Is hotter than 'tis-no matter where:

A camel drops down completely tanned

When he crosses the line in Jou-jou land

If things are now as things were then.
Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen!

A traveller once got stuck in the sand
On the fiery edge of Jou-jou land;
The Jou-jous they confiscated him,
And the Jim-jam tore him limb from limb;
But, dying, he said: "If eaten I am,
I'll disagree with this Dam-jim-jam!
He'll think his stomach's a Hoodoo's den!"
Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen!

Then the Jim-jam felt so bad inside,
It just about humbled his royal pride.
He decided to physic himself with sand,
And throw up his job in the Jou-jou land.
He descended his throne of red-hot rocks,
And hired a barber to cut his locks:
The barber died of the got-'em-again.
Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen!

And now let

every good Mussulman Get all the good from this tale he can.

If you wander off on a Jamboree,

Across the stretch of the desert sea,

Look out that right at the height of your booze
You don't get caught by the Jou-jou-jous!
You may, for the Jim-jam's at it again.

Allah il Allah! Oo-aye! Amen!

Alaric Bertrand Stuart.

TO MARIE

WHEN the breeze from the bluebottle's blustering blim
Twirls the toads in a tooroomaloo,

And the whiskery whine of the wheedlesome whim
Drowns the roll of the rattatattoo,

Then I dream in the shade of the shally-go-shee,
And the voice of the bally-molay

Brings the smell of stale poppy-cods blummered in blee
From the willy-wad over the way.

The Rollicking Mastodon

Ah, the shuddering shoo and the blinketty-blanks
When the yungalung falls from the bough
In the blast of a hurricane's hicketty-hanks
On the hills of the hocketty-how!
Give the rigamarole to the clangery-whang,
If they care for such fiddlededee;

But the thingumbob kiss of the whangery-bang
Keeps the higgledy-piggle for me.

L'ENVOI

It is pilly-po-doddle and aligobung
When the lollypop covers the ground,
Yet the poldiddle perishes punketty-pung
When the heart jimmy-coggles around.
If the soul cannot snoop at the giggle-some cart,
Seeking surcease in gluggety-glug,

It is useless to say to the pulsating heart,
"Panky-doodle ker-chuggetty-chug!"

853

John Bennett.

MY DREAM

I DREAMED a dream next Tuesday week,
Beneath the apple-trees;

I thought my eyes were big pork-pies,
And my nose was Stilton cheese.
The clock struck twenty minutes to six,
When a frog sat on my knee;

I asked him to lend me eighteenpence,
But he borrowed a shilling of me.

Unknown.

THE ROLLICKING MASTODON

A ROLLICKING Mastodon lived in Spain,
In the trunk of a Tranquil Tree.
His face was plain, but his jocular vein

Was a burst of the wildest glee.

His voice was strong and his laugh so long

That people came many a mile, And offered to pay a guinea a day

For the fractional part of a smile.

The Rollicking Mastodon's laugh was wideIndeed, 'twas a matter of family pride; And oh so proud of his jocular vein

Was the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain.

The Rollicking Mastodon said one day,
"I feel that I need some air,

For a little ozone's a tonic for bones,
As well as a gloss for the hair."

So he skipped along and warbled a song
In his own triumphulant way.

His smile was bright and his skip was light
As he chirruped his roundelay.

The Rollicking Mastodon tripped along,
And sang what Mastodons call a song;
But every note of it seemed to pain

The Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain.

A Little Peetookle came over the hill,
Dressed up in a bollitant coat;

And he said, "You need some harroway seed,
And a little advice for your throat."
The Mastodon smiled and said, "My child,
There's a chance for your taste to grow.
If you polish your mind, you'll certainly find
How little, how little you know."

The Little Peetookle, his teeth he ground
At the Mastodon's singular sense of sound;
For he felt it a sort of a musical stain

On the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain.

Alas! and alas! has it come to this pass?"
Said the Little Peetookle. "Dear me!
It certainly seems your horrible screams
Intended for music must be!"