A TIME IN THE KITCHEN.
The fork said the corkscrew was crooked;
The remark made the flatiron sad;
The steel knife at once lost its temper,
And called the tea-holder a cad.
The teaspoon stood on its metal;
The kettle exhibited bile;
The stove grew hot at the discussion,
But the ice remained cool all the while.
The way that the cabbage and lettuce
Kept their heads was something sublime;
The greens dared the soup to mix with them,
And the latter, while it hadn’t much thyme,
Got so mad it boiled over—the fire
Felt put out and started to cry;
The oven then roasted the turkey
And the cook gave the grease spot the lye.
The plate said the clock in the corner
Transacted its business on tick.
And the plate, which for years had been battered,
The clock said was full of old nick.
The salt said the cream should be whipped,
The cinnamon laughed—in a rage
The cream said the salt was too fresh,
And its friend wasn’t thought to be sage.
You’d not think a thing that’s so holey
As the sieve would have mixed in the fuss,
But it did, for it said that the butter
Was a slippery sort of a cuss;
No one knows how the row would have ended,
Had not the cook, Maggie O’Dowd,
(Her work being done) closed the kitchen,
And thusly shut up the whole crowd.