To any reader who is familiar with the French language, this may seem almost too easy, but I doubt if anybody who knew no language but modern Greek would guess it. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may add that the French word je is pronounced “mwor,” thus supplying the missing rhyme.
Millie Wyandotte disgraced herself with the following lyric:
“After her dance, Salome, curtseying, fell,
And shocked the Baptist with her scream of ‘Bother!’”
She had no sooner read it out than Mr. Bunting rose in his place and said gravely:
“I can only speak definitely for myself, but it is my firm belief that all present, with the exception of Miss Wyandotte, have too much refinement to be able to guess correctly the missing rhyme in this case.” Loud and prolonged applause.
George Leghorn was particularly happy at these pencil games, and to him is due this very clever combination of the lyrical and the acrostical:
“My first a man is, and my next a trap;
My whole’s forbidden, lest it cause trouble.”
The answer to the acrostic is “mantrap”; the missing rhyme is “mishap.” The entire solution was given in something under half an hour by Popsie Bantam. She was a very bright girl, and afterwards married a man in the Guards (L.N.W.R.).
Mr. Bunting, a rather strong party-politician, one night submitted this little triolet:
“When the Great War new weapons bade us forge,
Whom did the nation trust? ’Twas thou, Asquith!”