MY MOTOR CAP
Reading edition
[Motor-caps, we are informed, have created such a vogue in the Provinces, that ladies, women and factory girls may be seen wearing them on every occasion, though unconnected, in other respects, with modern methods of locomotion.]
A motor car I shall never afford With a gay vermilion bonnet, Of course I might happen to marry a lord, But it's no good counting on it. I have never reclined on the seat behind, And hurtled across the map, But my days are blest with a mind at rest, For I wear a motor cap.
I am done with Gainsborough, straw and toque, My dresses are bound with leather, I turn up my collar like auto-folk, And stride through the pitiless weather; With a pound of scrag in an old string bag, In a tram with a child on my lap, Wherever I go, to shop or a show, I wear a motor cap.
I don't know a silencer from a clutch, A sparking-plug from a bearing, But no one, I think, is in closer touch With the caps the women are wearing; I'm au fait with the trim of the tailor-made brim, The crown and machine-stitched strap; Though I've neither the motor, the sable-lined coat, nor The goggles—I wear the cap.
No, this isn't a collection of tubercular microbes escaping from the congress; but merely the Montgomery-Smiths in their motor-car, enjoying the beauties of the country.