YES OR NO?
["The hand-writing of well-educated Ladies is often disgracefully illegible."—A Ladies' Journal.]
Oh, never did lover in fable
In such a predicament stand,
A letter I wrote to my MABEL,
To ask for her heart and her hand,
With compliments worded so nicely,
A lifelong devotion I swore;
She's answered—and left me precisely
As wise as before!
It is true that I begged, when inditing
My note, a reply with all speed,
And MABEL, to judge from the writing,
Fulfilled my petition indeed!
The drift of this scrawl, so erratic,
I am wholly unable to guess—
It may be refusal emphatic,
Or can it be "Yes"?
"Affection" she'll feel for me "ever,"
But stay—if that blot is an "n"
It turns it at once into "never,"
Or is it a slip of the pen?
Her heart will a "truant (or true?) be,"
And what is the word just above?
It looks like—it cannot be—"booby"!
Perhaps it is "love."
A meeting must needs be awaited
To render these mysteries plain;
Perhaps in this letter she's stated
She never will see me again;
On one thing at least I've decided;—
Should she be my partner for life,
A type-writer shall be provided
For the use of my wife!