Pansy and me for Coney Sunday noon
To see a perfect lady bump the bumps;
We rubbered at the lions with the chumps
And took the Wellman special to the moon.
She asks me, "Dance?" I answers, "Just as soon,"
And so we clutched and whirled into the gumps,
But every time I went to stir my stumps
They stuck like gum-drops to a macaroon.
"I could die dancing, Danny!" murmurs she.
(I gambolled on her corns, she hollered, "Don't!")
"I could die dancing also" (this from me),
"But if you'll pass me up, I guess I won't."
Just then some lemon-sport observed my glide
And warbled, "Slide, you frozen chicken, slide!"
XVIII
I next sprung Pansy for a four-bit feed—
It was a giddy tax, but what care I?
We shot the bill-of-fare from soup to pie
And lemonade (that cost an extra seed).
"You're the cute plunge," says Pans', and I agreed
That at a spenderfest I wasn't shy,—
That when it came to rolling nickels by,
Willie the Cowboy was a perfect bleed.
She said that Thomas Lawson on a lark
Would faint away to see the way I blew;
She said I'd be the whizz in Central Park,
And Ready Cash to me seemed very few.
I asked her, Did she need a Valentine?
And she responded, "You're the pink for mine!"
XIX
We took the iron-clad wave-tub home at ten,
And as we sat conversing on the deck
A certain Hester-street spaghetti-neck
Pipes through the darkness, "Who's yer ladyfren'?"
There might have been a hoe-down there and then
(That war-ship never came so near a wreck);
The dog-eye boy got just as pale as heck
And made a duck behind the trenches, when—
Pansy boiled up and clamped me by a flip.
"Nixie the kindergarten!" murmurs she.
"Gents," I replied out loud, "Get off the ship
And walk, or else nail down that repartee.
This yard of lace I'm holding, so to speak,
Is pinned on tight—or will be in a week."
XX
A-lopping on a car-barn bench I spied
Gilly the Grip, quite recent this p.m.,
Just like a lily on a broken stem
Or like a Salt Lake buck without a bride.
"Chirk, Gilly, chirk!" I says in tones of pride,
"Perhaps this unhinged heart is just pro tem.
The world is full of pompadours for them
That keep their search-lights peeled from side to side."
But Gill remarked, "Eh, what? Say, I'm so slow
I couldn't catch the hour-hand on a clock.
I'm simply stationary as they grow;.
A lamp-post race could beat me round the block.
You needn't think you're such an Alfred G.,
To motor by a quarry-cart like me!"