FROM W..T W..TM..N.
(An American, one of the roughs, a kosmos.)
Nature, continuous ME!
Saltness, and vigorous, never-torpid yeast of ME!
Florid, unceasing, for ever expansive;
Not schooled, not dizened, not washed and powdered;
Strait-laced not at all; far otherwise than polite;
Not modest, nor immodest;
Divinely tanned and freckled; gloriously unkempt;
Ultimate yet unceasing; capricious though determined;
Speak as thou listest, and tell the askers that which they seek to know.
Thy speech to them will be not quite intelligible.
Never mind! utter thy wild common-places;
Yawp them loudly, shrilly;
Silence with shrill noise the lisps of the foo-foos.
Answer in precise terms of barbaric vagueness,
The question that the Fun editor hath sparked through Atlantic cable
To W..T W..TM..N, the speaker of the password primeval;
The signaller of the signal of democracy;
The seer and hearer of things in general;
The poet translucent; fleshy, disorderly, sensually inclined;
Each tag and part of whom is a miracle——.
(Thirteen pages of MS. relating to MR. W..T W..TM.N are here omitted).
Rhapsodically state the fact that is and is not;
That is not, being past; that is, being eternal;
If indeed it ever was, which is exactly the point in question.
⁂ The fact, rhapsodically stated, occupies twenty-six more pages of MS., but is left in as much doubt at the end as it was in at the beginning.—Ed. Fun.