My Mentor in dress and diction,
And loyally laboured to cultivate
A taste for the latest fiction;
Though I still read DICKENS upon the sly,
And even SCOTT, when nobody's by.

It's true I've managed to draw the line
At going to tango teas,
For, after all, I am fifty-nine
And a trifle stiff in the knees;
But I've had to give up billiards for "slosh,"
And pay laborious homage to "squash."

Long since my whiskers I had to shave
To please this young barbarian,
But still for a while I stealthily clave
To the use of Pommade Hungarian;
But now my tyrant has made me snip
The glory and pride of my upper lip.

"My dear old man," he recently said,
"If you go on waxing the ends,
You're bound to be cut, direct and dead,
By all of my nuttiest friends.
For it's only done, so _The Mail_ discovers,
By Labour leaders and taxi-shovers."

So the deed was done, but whenever I gaze
On my face in the glass I moan
As I think of the mid-Victorian days