Well, Lulu was chatting away with her beau
Of dances and courtships, and quarrels and so,
When all of a sudden she made a full stop
In her gay tête-a-tête, and screamed at the top
Of her voice, till each sleepy-eyed maid in the hall
Sprang quick to her feet at the terrible squall,
There pale as the Greek Slave of Powers she stood,
Her white lips unstained by a vestige of blood,
Her arms, like a Pythoness, in agony tossed,
As she shrieked in her anguish, “O Lord, I am lost!”
While footsteps fell round her as quick as the clatter
Of a cavalcade’s hoofs, each one bawling at her
“O Lulu, my darling, pray what is the matter?”
“A serpent is biting me under my dress!”
“Lord help us!” burst forth in a wail of distress,
“It’s coiling around my—It’s big as a rail,
And a great bunch of rattles tied on to its tail,”
Ne’er toper saw snake from his jag or his jug
Like this which clasped Lulu in terrible hug.
There were sobbings and swooning away on the floor,
Of disordered lingerie over a score,
“Unions,” “Merodes,” and garters galore,
Indeed ’twas a contretemps all might deplore!
“A snake at a dance!” “How dare poke its face
Into such an exceedingly improper place?”
So the old snake in Paradise brought us to grief;
He skulked behind Eve; Eve behind her fig leaf,
And this great world, which it took a whole week to make,
Went into bankruptcy, all for one snake.
O Fashion, what follies your votaries make,
What frauds to your bosom with rapture you take,
’Twixt the gay masquerade and the sorrowful wake,
One tenth is for fashion and nine tenths for mere fake,
And maidens adorn their fair forms with a snake;
For earrings, for bracelets, for necklace and jewel,
Diamonds and rubies for eyes cold and cruel.
Sparkling and dazzling at reception and mass,
On debutante’s fingers or on widow of grass,
O! feminine dragon!—how else depict her,
When the girl of my dreams turns boa-constrictor?
Why pineth fair woman’s heart for a snake?
Man would perish a million times o’er for her sake.
At last one golden youth, more bold than the rest,
Walked up, bowed and spoke as he pulled down his vest
“Well! crying won’t help it, so pray now be still,
They say there’s a way whene’er there’s a will,
I will tie up his tail in a sort of a link,
And jerk him from under his quarters, I think,”
Dread silence fell like a spell on the air,
Sobs hardly suppressed, inarticulate prayer,
When cautiously groping lest he might mistake,
And grab a—suspender instead of the snake,
He at last found the dragon and fastened his hold,
It was scaly and squirming, and quivering and cold,
Like a huge anaconda writhing its fold,
And then with a clutch that was steady and bold,
He twisted it up in a sort of a loop,
And jerked out—at least forty feet of steel hoop!
IN MEMORIAM.
[Lieutenant Boyd Mercer, Eleventh Kentucky Infantry, U. S. A., 1861.]
Some souls, unmoved by lust of fame or pelf,
Pass their whole lives without a thought of self;
No selfish schemes their high ideals smother—
Such was thy soul, my noble-hearted brother.
Modest in manner as a gentle maid,
As lion bold was duty’s call obeyed,
Nor man nor devil made thy soul afraid,
To home, to God and Country ever true.
Like skylark springing from the morning dew,
Thine upward, sunlit flight thou didst pursue.
The ocean’s costliest pearls lie ’neath its waves,
Blaze richest gems in undiscovered caves,
And like the wealth o’er which the ocean rolls
God knows the value of his purest souls.
Citizen and Christian soldier—why lament
A life so truly planned, so nobly spent?
Now without taint or mixture of alloy
Christ’s soldier marches in eternal joy.
