Franklin P. Adams
Reading edition
Franklin P. Adams, better known to the readers of his column as F. P. A., was born at Chicago, Illinois, November 15, 1881. He attended the University of Michigan (1899-1900) and, after a brief career as an insurance agent, plunged into journalism. Adams had already been an ardent contributor to B. L. T.’s “A Line o’ Type or Two” and, in 1903, he began conducting a column of his own on the Chicago Journal. Late in 1904, he came to New York, running his “Always in Good Humor” section on The Evening Mail until 1914, when he started “The Conning Tower” for the New York Tribune.
Adams is the author of five volumes of a light verse that is not only skilful but energetic as well as facile. Tobogganing on Parnassus (1909), In Other Words (1912), By and Large (1914), Weights and Measures (1917) and Something Else Again (1920) reveal a spirit which is essentially one of mockery. One admires these books for their impudent—and faithful—paraphrases of Horace and Propertius, for their last line twists à la O. Henry, (with whom Adams wrote a comic opera that never reached New York), for the ease with which their author springs his surprises and, perhaps most of all, for the healthy satire that runs sharply through all of his colloquial and dexterous lines.
238
WAR AND PEACE
“This war is a terrible thing,” he said,
“With its countless numbers of needless dead;
A futile warfare it seems to me,
Fought for no principle I can see.
Alas, that thousands of hearts should bleed
For naught but a tyrant’s boundless greed!”
· · · · · ·
Said the wholesale grocer, in righteous mood,
As he went to adulterate salable food.
Spake as follows the merchant king:
“Isn’t this war a disgraceful thing?
Heartless, cruel, and useless, too;
It doesn’t seem that it can be true.
Think of the misery, want and fear!
We ought to be grateful we’ve no war here.”
· · · · · ·
“Six a week”—to a girl—“That’s flat!
I can get a thousand to work for that.”
THE RICH MAN
The rich man has his motor-car,
His country and his town estate.
He smokes a fifty-cent cigar
And jeers at Fate.
239He frivols through the livelong day,
He knows not Poverty, her pinch.
His lot seems light, his heart seems gay;
He has a cinch.
Yet though my lamp burns low and dim,
Though I must slave for livelihood—
Think you that I would change with him?
You bet I would!
THOSE TWO BOYS
When Bill was a lad he was terribly bad.
He worried his parents a lot;
He’d lie and he’d swear and pull little girls’ hair;
His boyhood was naught but a blot.
At play and in school he would fracture each rule—
In mischief from autumn to spring;
And the villagers knew when to manhood he grew
He would never amount to a thing.
When Jim was a child he was not very wild;
He was known as a good little boy;
He was honest and bright and the teacher’s delight—
To his mother and father a joy.
All the neighbors were sure that his virtue’d endure,
That his life would be free of a spot;
They were certain that Jim had a great head on him
And that Jim would amount to a lot.
240And Jim grew to manhood and honor and fame
And bears a good name;
While Bill is shut up in a dark prison cell—
You never can tell.