From Slams of Life, with Malice for All And Charity Toward None Assembled in Rhyme by J. P. McEvoy, With black and white interruptions by Frank King, Chicago : P. F. Volland Company; 1919; pp. 76-100.
SLAMS OF LIFE
With Malice for All And Charity
Towards None
Assembled in Rhyme by
J. P. McEVOY
With black and white interruptions by
FRANK KING
[Part IV.]
[75]
THE PATIENT PROXY
When butchers send us tenderloin
That’s anything but tender,
A hot sulphuric bawling out
The missus loves to render.
She shoots a sharp and searing speech
That scorches up the lea,
But the butchers never hear that speech,
She tells it all to me.
When grocers overcharge us, and
I’ll say that’s rather “offen”
My bosom pal consigns the bunch
Where even steel would soften.
She rips them up and down the keel —
Oh, how they’d learn to fear it.
If they just heard the stuff I’ve heard,
But then they never hear it.
Upon my poor, unwilling ears
She practices each sermon
For peddlers, maids and grocery boys
And other kinds of vermin.
“I’ll tell them this, I’ll tell them that” —
Corrosive is her chatter.
But when she’s tried it out on me,
That always ends the matter.
[76]
THE JANITOR’S GOOD TO HIS FOLKS
Slip me an ear while I sing you the son of a
Gun in the cellar, the janitor bloke,
He who can give you more pain in the run of a
Season than vaudyville’s deadliest joke.
Down in his catacombs, taking it easy, O!
His to decide if her soldiers or stokes,
True, you may freeze
While he sits at his ease —
But isn’t he good to his folks?
He is!
You bet he is good to his folks!
Oft in the night — and it needn’t be stilly, sir —
You will awaken with ice in your ears,
Cold is your craw and your liver is chilly, sir,
But snug in his lair the janitor cheers.
Do you suspect that he does it a-purpose, O!
Do you suppose it is one of his jokes?
Letting you freeze
As a sort of a wheeze?
Sure! — But he’s good to his folks,
He is!
A regular bear with his folks!
You can just gamble your bottom simoleom
He and his brood aren’t freezing at night;
His radiators don’t flood the linoleum,
His gasometers don’t clog, and read right;
His light connections are never burned out for him,
His garbage goes, and his laud(a)ry soaks —
What? It ain’t fair?
Gosh, what do you care
So long as he’s good to his folks?
My! My!
And say! Ain’t he good to his folks!
[77]
So that’s why I sing you that lovely old son of a
Gun in the cellar, the janitor guy,
He who allots you more pain in the run of a
Year than most anything under the sky;
But if your flat is cold as a halibut,
If in your service he dallies and pokes,
Recover your cheer
By repeating this here:
Perhaps he is good to his folks.
Ah, yes!
A janitor’s good to his folks!
[78]
HONEST CONFESSION IS GOOD
When I return late from the clamorous mart
Or a bumper in yonder café,
Do you hurry to greet me, O wife of my heart,
In a blithe douglasfairbanksy way?
Do you greet me, my own, with a sibilant kiss,
Do you smile, as is often your wont?
The truth, I must say, is the converse of this —
I’m constrained to reply that you don’t.
It is true you’re a portion of demitasse size,
But your wrath is terrific plus ten,
And whn I offend you, you swiftly uprise —
And gosh, but I’m timorous then!
And that’s way I quail when I’m out after dark,
And I sidestep the wassail and spree,
For you’re not a bit bigger than Marguerite Clark,
But you look like Jack Dempsey to me.
I’m afraid of your glower, and I’m skeered of your
frown
And your smile that is cutting as steel;
When you silently give me that cold up-and-down
It congeals the whole length of my keel.
And when each bonny eye shows a deadly disdain,
I just audibly quiv’ at the knee —
It is true you’re no bigger than Johnny Kilbane,
But you look like Jack Dempsey to me.
[79]
THE BUNS OF NOTRE DAME
I sing the buns of Notre Dame,
I warb their beamish beauty,
I chaunt their charms with heart aflame,
For chaunting is my duty.
I strum for all her shining sons,
Departed and aborning,
Those beamish, beatific buns,
We got on Sunday morning!
The crust an aromatic brown,
As fragrant as the Indus,
You should have seen us shuffle down
As much as they would sind us.
O, coruscant, collegiate grub,
O pabulum adorning
The platter of the veriest dub
On sunny Sunday morning!
O, Notre Dame, the years have fled,
Since your professors caught me,
And I remember but your bread,
And not the stuff you taught me.
Your ’isms, ’ologies and ’ics,
Were nothing to be scorning,
But what are ’ologies to Micks
With buns on Sunday morning?
’Tis true, the ancient slickers had
A lot of fancy chefers,
Ambrosia was a snappy lad,
Among Olympic zephyrs,
But for their fodder and their fun —
Believe a gypsy’s warning —
I would not trade the palest bun
We got on Sunday morning!
[The buns made at the University of Notre Dame were famously good. In A Cave of Candles, part 12, by Dorothy V. Corson, about The Notre Dame Grotto, she found out that Brother Willebrord made these wonderful buns, but he died before he could share the recipe. — Elf.Ed.]
[80]
A COST OF LIVING EPIC
John R. Crœsus owned a clutter of mazuma (slang for
dough),
And he led the league in grabbing off the dollars long ago,
And he speared the shining shekels with an ambidex-
trous fin,
And he hunted down the festive tintinabulating tin;
But his pile is pale and puerile when compared with
that of mine,
He is just a pica piker and a tin horn and a shine,
I am richer now than Crœsus ever dreamed that he
could be —
I’ve a genuine potato and it all belongs to me!
Alexander Henry Midas was the transmutative guy,
With alchemic mitts he juggled ev’ry thing that met
his eye,
With goboons of gelt to ratify his smallest wish or whim,
You might say, as in a whimsy, life was touch and
go(ld) for him.
For indeed he had a multitude of cunning, curly kale,
And he had it by the bushel and the barrel and the bale,
But I hold I have him faded, more plethoric is my roll —
I am now the sole possessor of a genuine piece of coal!
Sing me not the wealth of Inca, El Dorado, or Cathay,
Fair Golconda, General Motors, U. S. Steel, or Wheat
of May,
Tell me not of John D., Morgan, Alcibiades, or Schwab,
Captain Kidd, the Guggenheimers — mention not one
single slob,
For these puny penny snatches could not match my
hoard immense,
They resemble phony testoons — and a testoon’s thirty
cents!
I am richer than a magnate, private banker, or a yegg,
For I own controlling interest in an onion and an egg.
[81]
THE DURN YE CREE
(As we say at the club)
The council committee on health has directed the health commissioner to draw up an ordinance to enforce sanitary conditions in “hot dog” stands, popcorn, ice cream, and peanut dispensaries. — News item.
I eat prophylactic pretzels
On an antiseptic dish,
Served with pure selective shad roe
From a choice eugenic fish;
I’ve deodorized my onions,
and I’ve filtered all my cheese —
But a sanitary hot dog?
Don’t insist upon it, please!
All my prunes are disinfected,
I have mundified my clams,
Ventilated all my liver,
And decrassified my hams;
All my bacon is abstergent,
Carbolated to the bone;
But I ask you like a brother —
Leave my dogs of peace alone!
Oh, I’m death on protozoa;
As for germses, sir, I hate ’em;
A ain’t clubby with bacilli,
And I love to castigate ’em.
I’m the katabolic kiddo
At this pathogenic game;
But I love my dogs al fresco,
Alee samee, alee same!
[82]
TO A TWENTY MONTH OLD TRAMP
Our home is not a marble hall
With tesselated floors and things.
No Gobelin doodads on the wall,
No porticos and massive wings;
No butlers buttle in the flies,
No footmen foot around the lea,
But just the same it satisfies
Your ma and me.
We do not scorn our humble home,
Although it ain’t no mansion gay;
We do not gallivant and roam
Around the streets the livelong day.
We love to sit and rest our feets
Beneath our almost-copper lamp,
But you would rather bum the streets.
You little tramp.
All day you gad around the yard
And waste your time in useless play,
While me and ma are working hard
To get your fodder day by day;
But when the shades of evening drop,
Do you come home from out the din?
You don’t! It almost takes a cop
To bring you in.
Our home, I know, is not a spot
Of monumental size and style,
But still it has that vacant lot
And dusty alley beat a mile.
But if you differ, little cuss,
Let’s compromise the thing, i.e.,
Come in and spend the nights with us,
Your ma and me.
[84]
LINES TO AN AMATEUR CORNETIST
“I blow in it so sweet and it comes out so sour!”
— Weber and Fields.
Across the vacant lot from me
A young man sits in ecstacy,
And on the evening air he flings
From his cornet a lot of things
That might be music, sweet and gay.
If only he would learn to play.
And yet he tries, I’ll say for him,
He tries with vigor, verve, and vim;
Each dewy eve, each blushing morn
He tells his troubles to that horn,
Which sympathizes with his woe
And raises h—l, I’d have you know.
But, reader, do not garner here
That I am crabbed, cross, and queer,
Disliking “Music, Heavenly Maid,”
In blissful harmonies arrayed.
I could not love her as I do,
If I could stand this other, too.
And yet the sad and sour cry
This horn outpours against the sky
Would not embitter me in full
If only it would cease to pull
The national air at night, when I
Have gone to bed in sleep to lie.
“O say,” he bugles, “can you see?”
At twelve o’clock, at night to me,
And here’s the way the anthem goes
[85]
And here’s the way my neighbor blows.
So I must stand most all the night
Before he finally gets it right.
For months and months I’ve been the dupe
Of this outrageous cornu-coup,
And all the milk of human zest
Is clabbered in my aching breast. . . .
He’s going to play a harp real soon
(And I’ll bet he’ll play it out of tune!)
[86]
A CHICAGO NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT
Once upon a midnight dreary,
(Gentle reader grow not leary,
This is not a blank and bleary
Paraphrase of Eddie Poe),
I was sunk in silent slumber
When across the lea did lumber
Forty-eight or some such number
Singing cast who row on row
Smote the welkin bookoo wallop
With their fa-so-la-si-do.
On the fence beside the alley,
Hopped a fair and feline Galli
With a Straccari pal-y
And they did a vocal chore.
And while serenading for us
With a cacophonic chorus
Tuneful Tommies treaded o’er us
Looking for some lost Lenore.
Who, to judge their ullulations,
They’d discover nevermore.
“Cats,” I cried, “Your lyrics grieve me,
Pray disperse, begone, and leave me
Get thee hence before I heave me
Missiles till you’re sad and sore.
You’ve no idee what my rent is,
Nor have I of what your bent is,
Only you’re non compos mentis
And I hate you to the core;
Get thee back to South Chicago
And return to us no more.”
But they gave no sign nor token
That my sentiments outspoken
[87]
Through their rhythmic souls were soakin’
While their songs they did outpour.
Higher soared their chant and higher,
Till I rose in vengeful ire
And I smote one gay Mariah
Full upon her esprit d’corps.
And they stood not on the order
Of their going from my door —
And I’ve seen them . . .
Nevermore!
[88]
WARNING!
Of cunning tricks you have a store,
But one of them, I’m finding now,
I do not like no way, no more,
No how.
No sweeter baby on the block,
Than you, you darling little gem,
But why arise at four o’clock
A. M.?
At first I thought it cute and pert
For you to stand up in your crib,
And sing your matins, little squirt,
Ad lib.
But it has ceased to be a joke,
Some how I cannot smile again,
You give me a distinctly loc-
Al pain.
Where do you get this fatal flaw?
This early rising heresy?
You didn’t get it from your Maw,
Nor me!
Some deadly atavistic shock
Has warped your being, root and stem,
Else why awake at four o’clock
A. M.?
No grouch am I, nor yet a crank,
But you have put me on the blink —
You cut it out or Paw will spank
You pink.
[89]
A DIPLOMATIC MOVE
My Missus is a lovesome thing
When she is feeling gentle,
Her smile is as the smile of Spring
Upon the lowly lentil;
She sympathizes with my woes,
She soothes me when I’m puny,
And bears with me although she knows
I’m cracked and also loony.
My Missus is a lovesome thing,
My verse she DOES admire,
She always lets me have my fling
(God help him, he’s a liar!)
My guide, philosopher, and friend
In every quirk and quand’ry,
And never oes she fail to send
My collars to the laundry.
My Missus is a lovesome thing,
She comforts and caresses
And only in the Fall and Spring
She buys expensive dresses;
A gracious wife, a regular pal
And cute as Mary Minter . . . .
(I hope this verse will square me up
For banqueting all winter.)
[90]
WISTFUL WORDS TO DOROTHY
Yes, I have a small request or two to ask you
That touch upon and appertain as well
To curiosu demonstrations of affectionate relations
With your brother who has come with us to dwell,
And, knowing how ungraciously you listen,
I’m just a trifle diffident and shy,
But in spite of apprehension,
This request I’m bound to mention:
Please do not poke our brother in the eye,
In the eye,
Please do not poke your brother in the eye.
It is quite inconsequential I will grant you,
A trivial little episode, I know,
And scarcely worth the bother
Of this pert parental pother
But I’m bound to set the limits you can go,
Or otherwise you might by easy stages
Advance to letting heavy missiles fly.
And swat your little brother
On some vital spot or other,
So I ask you, do not poke him in the eye,
In the eye,
Please do not poke your brother in the eye.
By the by, it just occurs to me to mention:
The picture which you make en-route for bed,
Quite a bit of beauty loses
When you stop to bounce your shoeses
On the apex of your sleeping brother’s head.
It is not the lack of sisterly affection
As afforded by this index I decry,
And for more important reasons
Than the chance of fatal lesions,
Here’s the rub: the cost of shoes is mighty high,
Mighty high!
P. S. — Don’t poke your brother in the eye.
[91]
WORDS AND MUSIC BY A MUSKRAT
I do not feel, nor ever felt
That this my own, my native pelt,
My coy, cutaneous carapace
Is cluttered up with charm and grace;
In fact, I think the following thunk:
The doggone thing looks pretty punk.
Some higher fate, I’m told, decides
What animules shall wear in hides;
The silver fox has flossy fur
That sells at many thousand per;
The sable gets a toney skin
That takes some husband for his tin.
The mole, the dark and devious mole,
Has got a hide that costs a roll,
But what have I? A measly pelt
That isn’t worth an ounce of gelt.
I would not wear it, were it not
The only hide what I have got.
And yet I’m told that women wear
My hide for coats most everywhere,
My awful looking epiderm’
Is quite the thing this winter term —
I wish you’d tell me why they do,
I cannot dope it out, can you?
[92]
THANKSGIVING DINNER SONG WITH AN EYE
FOR THE SOARING PRICES OF FOOD
I’ll have microscopic turkey,
And a Lilliputian pie,
Served with evanescent taters
That will flee the naked eye;
Imperceptible my olives,
Inappreciable my ices,
And they’ll carve my pigmy pudding
In emaciated slices.
I’ll have legendary dressings
On imaginary dishes;
Chimerical my oranges,
Intangible my fishes,
The cakes all purely abstract,
And nebulous the nuts,
With kernels of “howevers”
And “perhapses” “ifs” and “buts.”
Amorphous ducks and pickles
And phantastic sweet potatoes,
Hypothetical confections,
Suppositional tomatoes;
But I’ll enjoy my dinner,
Though it’s largely postulation,
For, Lord be praised! He’s given me
A good imagination.
[93]
“POO POO” SAYS YOU
">I held high hopes that you would be
A credit to your ma and me,
That some fine day we’d point with pride
To you, a lady, dignified,
And sweet and king and all that stuff,
Instead, you’re getting pretty tough.
For when we give you sage advice
And try to teach you to be nice,
You scorn our counsel, kind and true;
Says you,
“Poo poo!”
We try to teach you not to smear
The morning egg in either ear,
We say, “Now baby, don’t do that,
It ain’t de riguer in a flat.”
But you ignore our counsel fair
And rub the remnants in your hair,
And all the satisfaction we
Can get from you, that I can see
Is just two words and sassy too;
“Poo poo”
Says you.
“Poo poo” to ma; “poo poo” to me,
No matter what our words may be,
No matter how sagacious, fine
Your mother’s counsel . . . yes, or mine;
We’ve tried to fetch you up correct,
But good results I can’t detect,
And now, when we would mend your ways,
You treat us like a pair of jays,
To all commands and counsel, too,
“Poo poo”
Says you.
[94]
MY CONGRESSMAN
I know I have a Congressman
In Washington, D. C.
For now and then he comes around
To get a vote from me;
He proudly shakes me by the hand
And asks about my needs,
And when he goes to Washington
He sends me garden seeds.
Whenever there’s a bill for which
I’d like to have him vote,
I trust in him and tell him so
By telegram or note;
And he gets every one, I know,
And every one he reads,
For always when the Spring has come,
He sends me garden seeds.
The other day I wrote to him
“We put our faith in you
To make the League of Nations safe
If Wilson puts it through.”
His answer came right back to me:
“Appreciate your needs . . .
Am sending in tomorrow’s mail
Some lovely garden seeds.”
I’m glad I have a Congressman
In Washington, D. C.
His legislative efforts there
Mean Oh so much to me!
He is my representative,
For me his bosom bleeds,
And always when the Spring has come
He sends me garden seeds,
Radishes and lettuces,
Tomatoeses, cucumberses,
Such lovely garden seeds!
[96]
CONSERVING MOTHERS
I often hear some long haired guy,
I wild and frenzied anguish cry,
“Conserve the food, or else we’ll die,
Some way or other;
Come make each mother strive and try —
It’s up to mother.
“If there is any work to do,
An egg to fry, a lamb to stew,
A bun to bake, a drink to brew,
Let mother brew it;
And if the wash is needing blue —
Let mother blue it.
“Let mother rassle with the tub,
Let mother wash and rinse and rub,
Let mother sweep and scald and scrub
With wild elation;
Let mother do it — that’s the nub!
’Twill save the nation!”
Oh, every day I hear ’em rave:
“The vista’s dark, the outlook grave,
Expense we must cut and shave
To save the day, sir:
Let mother skimp, conserve and save
In every way, sir.”
But I protest against this crew,
Why leave it all for her to do?
Conserving is the job for you
And me and others,
I’m going to start conserving, too —
Conserving mothers.
[97]
LINES ON A HORSE ON A BITTER COLD DAY
Beside me to the curb you’re rolled,
And warm fur robes around you cast,
While I, uncovered, shake with cold
In blinding snow and chilling blast;
But I should be resigned, of course;
You are a flivver — I’m just a horse.
And it is right that robes of fur
Be wrapped around your fragile form,
For injury you might incur
If left uncovered to the storm —
While I will be immune, of course,
I’m not a car — I’m just a horse.
And standing naked all day long,
In wintry winds that cut like steel,
Is good for horses, who are strong —
But I confess, some grief I feel
That I was assembled by the Lord:
I wish it had been Henry Ford.
[98]
THE SWEET DRY AND DRY
They tell me this here prohibish’
Is good for fowl and flesh and fish,
That countless blessings ooze and flow
From flirting with the H 2 O,
And highballs made of rain and dew
Are very good for me and you. . . .
Well, mebbe so,
I dunno.
They say it’s wrong to oil our gears
With ales and lickers, wines and beers,
That in the subtle Scotch and Rye
A host of tribulations lie
And all the world will better be
For sipping sody, pop and tea . . .
Well, mebbe so,
I dunno.
The grape-juice babies tell us birds,
With many hand-embroidered words,
That we must drink instead of beers
This stuff that’s put around the piers —
They call it water, now, I think,
But is the darn stuff fit to drink?
Well . . . mebbe so,
I dunno.
What will the seltzercooties do
When they’ve eliminated brew?
Why smokes and songs will follow rum,
Then candy, cheese and chewing gum,
They’ll make the world so kind and sweet,
That life will be a wondrous treat.
Well, mebbe so,
I dunno.
[99]
WIM, WIGOR AND WICTORY WERSE
“You cannot keep a good man down,”
Remarked some noble mutt,
Malicious dornicks tossed at him
May crenulate his nut,
Outrageous slings and arrows trun
By fortune ill may pot ’em,
But you cannot keep the good men down,
You can’t keep cream on the bottom.
The deftly wielded double-cross
May catch you on the hip
And toss you on your vertebrae
But don’t desert the ship;
The anvil crew may lay for you
But never mind, dod rot ’em!
The big leagueman can’t lose his nan,
Cream won’t stay on the bottom.
“You cannot keep a good man down,”
As Jonah told the Whale,
Within his Webster’s unabridged
There’s no such word as fail;
Such men come smiling from the floor
Where uppercuts have sot ’em,
As I, perhaps, remarked before
You can’t keep cream on the bottom.
