TO THE GIRL IN KHAKI.
"MODERN SOCIETY."
I put the question shyly,
Lest you inform me dryly
That women's ways are far beyond my ken;
But was not khaki chosen
For coats and breeks and hosen
To render men invisible to men?
Why, then, dear maid, do you
Forsake your gayest hue
And dress in viewless khaki spick and span?
You charming little miss,
It never can be this:
To render you invisible to man!
Not that at all? What then?
You do not fear the men:
Perchance you only wish to hide your heart,
And so, you fickle flirt,
You don a khaki skirt
To foil the deadly aim of Cupid's dart.
THE TENDER HEART.
BY HELEN GRAY CONE.
She gazed upon the burnished brace
Of partridges he showed with pride;
Angelic grief was in her face;
"How could you do it, dear?" she sighed,
"The poor, pathetic, moveless wings!
The songs all hushed—oh, cruel shame!"
Said he, "The partridge never sings."
Said she, "The sin is quite the same.
"You men are savage through and through.
A boy is always bringing in
Some string of bird's eggs, white or blue,
Or butterfly upon a pin.
The angle-worm in anguish dies,
Impaled, the pretty trout to tease——"
"My own, I fish for trout with flies——"
"Don't wander from the question, please!"
She quoted Burns's "Wounded Hare,"
And certain burning lines of Blake's,
And Ruskin on the fowls of air,
And Coleridge on the water-snakes.
At Emerson's "Forbearance" he
Began to feel his will benumbed;
At Browning's "Donald" utterly
His soul surrendered and succumbed.