Good, well-bred children every day
He ravenously ate,—
All boys were fish who found their way
Into M’Alpine’s net:
Boys whose good breeding is innate,
Whose sums are always right;
And boys who don’t expostulate
When sent to bed at night;
And kindly boys who never search
The nests of birds of song;
And serious boys for whom, in church,
No sermon is too long.
Contrast with James’s greedy haste
And comprehensive hand,
The nice discriminating taste
Of Applebody Bland.
Bland only eats bad boys, who swear—
Who can behave, but don’t—
Disgraceful lads who say “don’t care,”
And “shan’t,” and “can’t,” and “won’t.”
Who wet their shoes and learn to box,
And say what isn’t true,
Who bite their nails and jam their frocks,
And make long noses too;
Who kick a nurse’s aged shin,
And sit in sulky mopes;
And boys who twirl poor kittens in
Distracting zoëtropes.
But James, when he was quite a youth,
Had often been to school,
And though so bad, to tell the truth,
He wasn’t quite a fool.
At logic few with him could vie;
To his peculiar sect
He could propose a fallacy
With singular effect.
So, when his Mentors said, “Expound—
Why eat good children—why?”
Upon his Mentors he would round
With this absurd reply: