Sez he proudly, “It has three great qualities, Samantha—it is terse, melodious, and truthful. Shakespeare’s chair wuz sold two hundred years ago to a Russian princess, and they’ve kep’ on a-sellin’ the original chair several times sence, so how could it be here? If I’d been writin’ in prose, I should a said that it wuz a dum humbug!”
And here he paused reflectively and dreamily.
“I might have said sunthin’ strong and strikin’ here—
“‘It makes me mad as a June bug
To see ’em try to humbug.
‘Josiah.’
“You know that June bugs hum,” and he murmured dreamily, “humbug, and bughum; it would have been very ingenious, and I might say sunthin’ strong about ‘tire,’ to rhyme with ‘Josiah,’ about relicks bein’ made to order. ‘It makes me tired,’ you know, only have it come all in poetry,” sez he; “it would be dretful approposs.”
Sez I coldly, “What you mean by that, I don’t have any idee.”
“Why,” sez he, “I see it in The World; it is French, and it means to have anything come in appropriate—approposs, you know. I should have used it in my poem, but I couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with it but hoss.”
Sez I, “Tire is a good word to use in connection with your poetry. Everybody would appreciate it, and hail it with effusion.”