[Illustration]

_Father._ "WHAT CLASS DID THEY PUT YOU IN COMING ACROSS?"

_Tommy._ "C 6."

* * * * *

HAY FEVER.

That is the twenty-seventh time to-day!
What is the use of Nobbs's Nasal Spray?
What use my aunt's "unfailing" recipes?
There _is_ no anodyne for this disease--
Thirty, I think! Another hanky, please--
A-tish-oo!

The world is gay; the bee bestrides the rose;
But I blaspheme and madly blow my nose.
For shame, O world! for shame, the heartless bee!
Your sweetest blooms are misery to me;
And as for that condemned acacia-tree--
A-tish-oo!

Oh, could I roam, contented like the sheep,
In sunlit fields where, as it is, I weep;
Oh, to be fashioned like the lower classes,
Who simply revel in the longest grasses,
While I sit lachrymose with coloured glasses--