WHY ELINOR IS EVER YOUNG.
Reading edition
(By a Fiancé à la Mode.)
["... The women they might have married—the girls whom they danced with when they were youths—have grown too old for our middle-aged suitors."—Standard.]
I'm just engaged: I'm forty-five— Our modern prime for wedded blisses. The age par excellence to wive With blooming fin-de-siècle Misses; I'm very happy; so's my Love; I don't regret that long I've tarried;— And yet I can't help thinking of The damozels I might have married.
Yes; there was Janet, slim and pert; I took her in last night to dinner, And cannot honestly assert That years conspire to make her thinner; Yet once we cooed o'er tea and buns; She quite forgets how on we carried, Nor owns, with undergraduate sons, That she was one I might have married. And Lilian, emanation soft, Fair widow of the latter Sixties, Ideal of the faith that oft With earliest homage intermixt is; I used to dream her, oh! so young; She's wrinkled now and bent and arid; It almost desecrates my tongue, But she was one I might have married. A truce to recollection sore; I'm still considered smart and youthful; And trusting, darling Elinor Assures me so with passion truthful; In my fond eyes she'll wither ne'er, Because—the fact can scarce be parried— I shan't survive to see her share The fate of those I might have married!
Mixed.
I'm Chargé d'Affaires—"Siam?" Oui. Pour England je don't care one "d." Je prig le Mekong, Si je keep it not long— They call me "Brigand!"—Je le suis.
Mind your Pease and Q.'s.—Q. "Why did Sir Donald Currie pair with Sir Joseph Pease?"—No; we are not going to say anything about "Pease and Currie" going together—we scorn getting a rice out of you that way—besides, this dish has been overdone. But the simple answer is, that as Sir Donald couldn't get any other pair this one was a "Pease aller." [We're better now. "Pax!"]