His speech is of mortgaged bedding,
On his kine he borrows yet,
At his heart is his daughter's wedding,
In his eye foreknowledge of debt.

He eats and hath indigestion,
He toils and he may not stop;
His life is a long-drawn question
Between a crop and a crop.


THE MARE'S NEST

Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
Was very, very bad indeed.

He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced--but this she did not know.

For Belial Machiavelli kept
The little fact a secret, and,
Though o'er his minor sins she wept,
Jane Austen did not understand
That Lilly--thirteen-two and bay
Absorbed one-half her husband's pay.

She was so good, she made him worse;
(Some women are like this, I think;)