NEW RHYMES FOR OLD CHILDREN.

Air.—"The Tarpaulin Jacket."

The whale has a beautiful figure,

Which he makes every effort to spoil,

For he knows if he gets a bit bigger

He increases the output of oil.

That is why he insists upon swathing

His person with layers of fat.

You have seen a financier bathing?

Well, the whale is a little like that.

At heart he's as mild as a pigeon

And extremely attached to his wife,

But getting mixed up with religion

Has ruined the animal's life.

For in spite of his tact and discretion

There is fixed in the popular mind

A wholly mistaken impression

That the whale is abrupt and unkind.

And it's simply because of the prophet

Who got into a ship for Tarshish

But was thrown (very properly) off it

And swallowed alive by "a fish."

Now I should not, of course, have contested

The material truth of the tale

If the prophet himself had suggested

That the creature at fault was a whale.

But the prophet had no such suspicion,

And that is convincing because

He was constantly in a position

To see what the miscreant was.

And this is what punctures the bubble,

As Jonah, no doubt, was aware:

"A fish" was the cause of the trouble,

But the whale is a mammal. So there!

A. P. H.