If you have ever, like me,
Missed the “r” and hit the “t,”
Addressing some fat blister
As “Mt.” instead of “Mr.,”
I trust you left it unamended?
Splendid.
— J.B. Boothroyd, Punch, 1948
Poems
A Novel Defense
G stands for gnu,
Whose weapons of defense
Are long, sharp, curling horns, and common sense.
To these he adds a name so short and strong,
That even hardy Boers pronounce it wrong.
How often on a bright autumnal day
The pious people of Pretoria say,
“Come, let us hunt the–” Then no more is heard
But sounds of strong men struggling with a word.
Meanwhile, the distant gnu with grateful eyes
Observes his opportunity and flies.
— Hilaire Belloc
Equal Opportunity
She frowned and called him Mr.
Because in sport he Kr.
And so in spite
That very night
This Mr. Kr. Sr.
— Anonymous
Payment in Kind
The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called a hen a most elegant creature.
The hen, pleased with that,
Laid an egg in his hat–
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Take Heart, Illiterates”
For years a secret shame destroyed my peace–
I’d not read Eliot, Auden or MacNeice.
But then I had a thought that brought me hope–
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
— Justin Richardson, Punch, 1952
“Plane Geometry”
‘Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi
Did plane and solid in the text,
All parallel were the radii,
And the ang-gulls convex’d.
“Beware the Wentworth-Smith, my son,
And the Loci that vacillate;
Beware the Axiom, and shun
The faithless Postulate.”
He took his Waterman in hand;
Long time the proper proof he sought;
Then rested he by the XYZ
And sat awhile in thought.
And as in inverse thought he sat
A brilliant proof, in lines of flame,
All neat and trim, it came to him,
Tangenting as it came.
“AB, CD,” reflected he–
The Waterman went snicker-snack–
He Q.E.D.-ed, and, proud indeed,
He trapezoided back.
“And hast thou proved the 29th?
Come to my arms, my radius boy!
O good for you! O one point two!”
He rhombused in his joy.
‘Twas Euclid, and the theorem pi
Did plane and solid in the text;
All parallel were the radii,
And the ang-gulls convex’d.
— Emma Rounds
Limerick
A tiger, by taste anthropophagous,
Felt a yearning inside his oesophagus;
He spied a fat Brahmin
And growled, “What’s the harm in
A peripatetic sarcophagus?”
— Anonymous
Altered States
There’s a girl out in Ann Arbor, Mich.,
To meet whom I never would wich.
She’d gobble ice cream
Till with colic she’d scream,
Then order another big dich.
A handsome young gent down in Fla.
Collapsed in a hospital ca.
A young nurse from Me.
Sought to banish his pe.
And shot him. Now what could be ha.?
There was a young lady from Del.
Who was most undoubtedly wel.
That to dress for a masque
Wasn’t much of a tasque,
But she cried, “What the heck will my fel.?”
There are plenty of people in Md.
Who think that their state is a fd.
It seems odd to find
That they don’t really mind
That Wis., not Md., is Dd.
See This Sceptred Isle.
Misc
- As Britain prepared for World War I, officers were required to have their swords sharpened.
- Wordsworth’s “The Rainbow” has an average word length of 3.08 letters.
- sin 10° × sin 50° × sin 70° = 1/8
- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE = I SWEAR HE’S LIKE A LAMP
- “I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“Address to My Sweetheart”
— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880