Grimm Tales Made Gay | Page 9

meant?To suffer no refusal, but, in spite of all the din,?There was no answer audible,?And so, with courage laudable,?His Royal Highness turned the knob, and stoutly entered in. Then he strode across the court,?But he suddenly stopped short?When he passed within the castle by a massive oaken door: There were courtiers without number,?But they all were plunged in slumber,?The prince's ear delighting
By uniting
In a snore.
The prince remarked: "This must be Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania!"?(And so was born the jest that's still?The comic journal's mania!)
[Illustration: _This shows how the prince won the princess's heart,
And the end of her sleeping was simply a start._]
With torpor reprehensible,?Numb, comatose, insensible,?The flunkeys and the chamberlains all slumbered like the dead, And snored so loud and mournfully,?That Charming passed them scornfully?And came to where a princess lay asleep upon a bed.?She was so extremely fair?That His Highness didn't care?For the risk, and so he kissed her ere a single word he spoke:-- In a jiffy maids and pages,?Ushers, lackeys, squires, and sages,?As fresh as if they'd been at least
A week awake,
Awoke,
And hastened, bustled, dashed and ran?Up stairways and through galleries:?In brief, they one and all began?Again to earn their salaries!
[Illustration]
Aroused from her paralysis,?As if in deep analysis?Of him who had awakened her, the princess met his eye:?Her glance at first was critical,?And sternly analytical.?And then she dropped her lashes and she gave a little sigh. As he watched her, wholly dumb,?She observed: "You doubtless come?For one of two good reasons, and I'm going to ask you which. Do you mean my house to harry,?Or do you propose to marry?"?He answered: "I may rue it,
But I'll do it,
If you're rich!"
The princess murmured with a smile:?"I've millions, at the least, to come!"?The prince cried: "Please excuse me, while?I go and get the priest to come!"
[Illustration]
_The Moral_: When affairs go ill?The sleeping partner foots the bill.
_How Jack Found that Beans May go Back on a Chap_
Without the slightest basis?For hypochondriasis?A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung, And with expression cynical?For half the day a clinical?Thermometer she held beneath her tongue.
Whene'er she read the papers?She suffered from the vapors,?At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan;?In every new and smart disease,?From housemaid's knee to heart disease,?She recognized the symptoms as her own!
She had a yearning chronic?To try each novel tonic,?Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm;?And from a homoeopathist?Would change to an hydropathist,?And back again, with stupefying calm!
[Illustration]
The closets of her villa?Were full of sarsaparilla,?Ammonia, digitalis, bronchial troches, soda mint.?Restoratives hirsutical,?And soaps to clean the cuticle,?And iodine, and peptonoids, and lint.
She was nervous, cataleptic,?And anemic, and dyspeptic:?Though not convinced of apoplexy, yet she had her fears. She dwelt with force fanatical?Upon a twinge rheumatical,?And said she had a buzzing in her ears!
Now all of this bemoaning?And this grumbling and this groaning?The mind of Jack, her son and heir, unconscionably bored. His heart completely hardening,?He gave his time to gardening,?For raising beans was something he adored.
[Illustration]
Each hour in accents morbid?This limp maternal bore bid?Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys.?She never granted Jack a day?Without some long "Alackaday!"?Accompanied by rolling of the eyes.
But Jack, no panic showing,?Just watched his beanstalk growing,?And twined with tender fingers the tendrils up the pole. At all her words funereal?He smiled a smile ethereal,?Or sighed an absent-minded "Bless my soul!"
That hollow-hearted creature?Would never change a feature:?No tear bedimmed his eye, however touching was her talk. She never fussed or flurried him,?The only thing that worried him?Was when no bean-pods grew upon the stalk!
But then he wabbled loosely?His head, and wept profusely,?And, taking out his handkerchief to mop away his tears, Exclaimed: "It hasn't got any!"?He found this blow to botany?Was sadder than were all his mother's fears.
_The Moral_ is that gardeners pine?Whene'er no pods adorn the vine.?Of all sad words experience gleans?The saddest are: "It _might_ have beans."?(I did not make this up myself:?'Twas in a book upon my shelf.?It's witty, but I don't deny?It's rather Whittier than I!)
[Illustration]
_How a Cat Was Annoyed and a Poet Was Booted_
A poet had a cat.?There is nothing odd in that--?(I _might_ make a