The Limerick trip was made at Tip’s suggestion. He declared that all his life he had wanted to go and see where the poetry was made. Once there, and perched on an outside car, he had inquired affably of the jarvey where they made the limericks. “I’d like to see the factory, you know. We might take home a couple.” This was beyond the driver, however. He, it appeared, had never heard of a limerick verse, and didn’t seem to think very much of those that Tip recited for his benefit. On the return journey Nelson suggested that Limerick was not likely to win fame, as Cork had done, through the medium of one of the verses named for it, since there was nothing to rhyme with Limerick. Whereupon Tip had gazed fixedly out the carriage window for a space and had then recited triumphantly:
“There was an old man of Limerick
Who said: ‘I’m the boy as can trim a rick.’
They gave him a fork,
But he ran off to Cork.
I forget if his name it was Jim or Mick.”
“I guess,” said Nelson, “the supper is on me.”
All the rest of the way back to Queenstown Tip invented limericks, until Nelson said despairingly that he wished he had never mentioned the things!