"Race? What is a race" (and a mocking face had Jill as she spake
the word)
"Unless for a prize the runner tries? The truth indeed ye heard,
For I can run as the antelope runs, and I can turn like a hare:—
The first one down wins half-a-crown—and I will race you there!"
"Yea, if for the lesson that you will learn (the lesson of humbled
pride)
The price you fix at two-and-six, it shall not be denied;
Come, take your stand at my right hand, for here is the mark we toe:
Now, are you ready, and are you steady? Gird up your petticoats! Go!"
And Jill she ran like a winging bolt, a bolt from the bow released,
But Jack like a stream of the lightning gleam, with its pathway
duly greased;
He ran down hill in front of Jill like a summer-lightning flash—
Till he suddenly tripped on a stone, or slipped, and fell to the
earth with a crash.
Then straight did rise on his wondering eyes the constellations
fair,
Arcturus and the Pleiades, the Greater and Lesser Bear,
The swirling rain of a comet's train he saw, as he swiftly fell—
And Jill came tumbling after him with a loud triumphant yell:
"You have won, you have won, the race is done! And as for the
wager laid—
You have fallen down with a broken crown—the half-crown debt is
paid!"
They have taken Jack to the room at the back where the family
medicines are,
And he lies in bed with a broken head in a halo of vinegar;
While, in that Jill had laughed her fill as her brother fell to
earth,
She had felt the sting of a walloping—she hath paid the price of
her mirth!
Here is the tale—and now you have the whole of it,
Here is the story—well and wisely planned,
Beauty—Duty—these make up the soul of it—
But, ah, my little readers, will you mark and understand?
Anthony C. Deane.
THE AULD WIFE
The auld wife sat at her ivied door,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
A thing she had frequently done before;
And her spectacles lay on her aproned knees.
The piper he piped on the hill-top high,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
Till the cow said "I die" and the goose asked "Why;"
And the dog said nothing, but searched for fleas.
The farmer he strode through the square farmyard;
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
His last brew of ale was a trifle hard,
The connection of which with the plot one sees.
The farmer's daughter hath frank blue eyes,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
She hears the rooks caw in the windy skies,
As she sits at her lattice and shells her peas.