"Oh my! pretty man, if you please, Blom boodin, biftek, currie lamb, Bouldogue, two franc half, quite ze cheese, Rosbif, me spik Angleesh godam."

He'd gaze in her eyes all the day,
Admiring their sparkle and dance,
And list while she rattled away

In the musical accents of France.

A waiter, for seasons before,

Had basked in her beautiful gaze, And burnt to dismember MILOR,

He loved DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE.

He said to her, "Méchante THERESE,
Avec désespoir tu m'accables,
Pense tu, DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE,
Ses intentions sont honorables.

"Flirtez toujours, ma belle, si tu oses
Je me vengerai ainsi, ma chère,
Je le dirai de quoi on compose

Vol au vent à la Financière !"

LORD LARDY knew nothing of this
The waiter's devotion ignored,
But he gazed on the beautiful miss,
And never seemed weary or bored.

The waiter would screw up his nerve,
His fingers he'd snap and he'd dance

And LORD LARDY

would smile and observe, "How strange

are the customs of France!"

Well, after delaying

a space,

His tradesmen no

longer would wait:

Returning to England apace,
He yielded himself to his fate.

LORD LARDY espoused, with a groan,
MISS DARDY'S developing charms,
And agreed to tag on to his own,
Her name and her newly-found arms.

The waiter he knelt at the toes
Of an ugly and thin coryphée,

Who danced in the hindermost rows
At the Théâtre des Variétés.

MADEMOISELLE DE LA SAUCE MAYON

NAISE

Didn't yield to a gnawing despair,
But married a soldier, and plays
As a pretty and pert Vivandière.

DISILLUSIONED

By an Ex-Enthusiast

Ο

H, that my soul its gods could see
As years ago they seemed to me
When first I painted them;

Invested with the circumstance
Of old conventional romance :
Exploded theorem !

The bard who could, all men above,
Inflame my soul with songs of love,
And, with his verse, inspire

The craven soul who feared to die,
With all the glow of chivalry
And old heroic fire ;

I found him in a beerhouse tap
Awaking from a gin-born nap,
With pipe and sloven dress;

Amusing chums, who fooled his bent,
With muddy, maudlin sentiment,
And tipsy foolishness !

The novelist, whose painting pen
To legions of fictitious men
A real existence lends,

Brain-people whom we rarely fail,
Whene'er we hear their names, to hail
As old and welcome friends,

I found in clumsy, snuffy suit,
In seedy glove, and blucher boot,
Uncomfortably big.

Particularly commonplace,

With vulgar, coarse, stock-broking face,
And spectacles and wig.

I found a coarse unpleasant man

With speckled chin - unhealthy, wan

Of self-importance full :
Existing in an atmosphere

That reeked of gin and pipes and beer
Conceited, fractious, dull.

The warrior whose ennobled name
Is woven with his country's fame,
Triumphant over all,

I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear;
His province seemed to be, to leer
At bonnets in Pall Mall.

Would that ye always shone, who write,
Bathed in your own innate lime-light,
And ye who battles wage,

Or that in darkness I had died
Before my soul had ever sighed
To see you off the stage!