TO MARY GARDEN—WITH A POSTSCRIPT.
So wonderful your art, if you preferred
Drayma to opry, you’d be all the mustard;
For you (ecstatic pressmen have averred)
Have Sarah Bernhardt larruped to a custard.
So marvelous your voice, too, if you cared
With turns and trills and tra-la-las to dazzle,
You’d have (enraptured critics have declared)
All other singers beaten to a frazzle.
So eloquent your legs, were it your whim
To caper nimbly in a classic measure,
Terpsichore (entranced reviewers hymn)
Would swoon upon her lyre for very pleasure.
[p 56]
]If there be aught you cannot do, ’twould seem
The world has yet that something to discover.
One has to hand it to you. You’re a scream.
And ’tis a joy to watch you put it over.
Postscriptum.
If there be any test you can’t survive,
The present test will mean your crucifying;
But I am laying odds of eight to five
That you’ll come thro’ with all your colors flying.
It is chiefly a matter of temperament. And more impudence and assurance is required to crack a safe or burglarize a dwelling than to cancel a shipment of goods in order to avoid a loss; but one is as honest a deed as the other. Or it would be better to say that one is as poor policy as the other. For it is not claimed that man is an honest animal; it is merely agreed that honesty profits him most in the long run.