Volume 98 — "COUNTING THE CHICKS!"
Reading edition
Dame Partlet broods in reverie beatific Over as nice a "sitting" Of golden eggs as ever fowl prolific Tended, untired, unflitting. Sound eggs and of good stock, there is no doubt of them. "What will come out of them? That question interests nor Partlet only; No; while the speckled beauty Sits in quiescent state, content though lonely, The poultry-yard's prime duty Filling her soul, how many minds are watching That hopeful hatching! Worthy Exchequer Hen! Layer and sitter Of really first-rate quality. Though rival fowls are enviously bitter, That doth not bate her jollity. Her duties Caquet Bonbec's game to tackle, Without much cackle. And then, what luck! A "run" unprecedented, Or almost so; and fodder With which the Laureate's Bird had been contented: Fortune has freaks far odder Than e'en a poet's whimsies, any day, Her rivals say. She must, they swear, have "raked in golden barley," Like the great Fleet Street "Cock." Their jealous jeremiads, sour and snarly, Partlet's prim feelings shock. 'Luck! Not at all: but the reward emphatic Of skill villatic." "Of course 'tis obvious that the Tory rooster Has 'crammed a plumper crop' Than Grand Old Chanticleer, that barn-yard boaster, Whose crowings now must stop, He thought his 'Surplus' none would nearly equal. Behold the sequel? 'Not quite as many eggs? No, but far finer, And not one will be addled. He, in his day, was a Distinguished Shiner, But then the yard he saddled With cross-bred cocktail chicks, unprofitable For nest or table." So Partlet, in her own complacent musings; And as for the outsiders, Reckoning up their probable gains and losings, Some fain would be deriders Of her, her fortune, and the brood forthcoming, Which she seems summing. "Don't count your chickens ere they're hatched!" they snigger. (Old saws are always dear to the censorious) "We've seen small chickens out of eggs much bigger. You Tory hens are always so vainglorious. We'd see—before we join this Farm-yard Chorus— The birds before us. "'Free Education'; Chick? 'Free Breakfast-table'? Or else 'Income-Tax Penny'? Humph! All good breeds! We cannot say we're able To cackle against any. Were they but in our nest, we'd hatch 'em gladly, But doubt you sadly!" Meanwhile complacent Partlet sits and broods, Blandly anticipative. As for the Public, well, of all the moods They clearly love the dative; And, so the brood be good, won't greatly bother As to who's mother!
Shall Women Smoke?
I see, by an advertisement, that a cork tip put to a cigarette prevents tongue irritation. I have no objection to my wife's smoking, if she will use these cigarettes. Her "tongue irritation" is something too trying to
Yours truly,
Socrates.
P. S.—Might call these cigarettes the "Xan-cork-tippé Cigarettes."
Street Music.—If the sole musical solace of the children of the back slums be the Italian organ-grinder, let him remain there; but don't let him emerge thence to worry and drive to distraction authors, composers, musicians, artists, and invalids. It was mainly the organ-grinding nuisance that killed John Leech.
"Holy Trinity Church," said the Pall Mall Gazette recently, "contains many notable memorials of past times." Among others, appears to be the head of the Earl of Suffolk, who was beheaded in 1554. This though a memorial of times past, can hardly be pronounced a relic of pastimes, except by those to whom beheading was good sport.
"COUNTING THE CHICKS!"
