as it should
be, with the first words of the chorus accentuated like hammer blows in
unison:

For--she--was--as--

and then tripping merrily into the rest of it:

--beautiful as a butterfly,
As fair as a queen,
Was pretty little Polly Perkins
Of Paddington Green.

It is given to most of us--not always without a certain wistful
regret--to recall the circumstances under which we first heard our
favourite songs; and on the evening when I met "Pretty Polly Perkins" I
was on a tramp steamer in the Mediterranean, when at last the heat had
gone and work was over and we were free to be melodious. My own position
on this boat was nominally purser, at a shilling a month, but in reality
passenger, or super-cargo, spending most of the day either in reading
or sleeping. The second engineer, a huge Sussex man, whose favourite
theme of conversation with me was the cricket of his county, was, it
seemed, famous for this song; and that evening, as we sat on a skylight,
he was suddenly withdrawn from a eulogy of the odd ways and deadly
left-handers of poor one-eyed "Jumper" Juniper (whom I had known
personally, when I was a small school-boy, in a reverential way) to give
the company "Pretty Polly Perkins." In vain to say that he was busy,
talking to me; that he was dry; that he had no voice. "Pretty Polly
Perkins" had to be sung, and he struck up without more ado:

I'm a broken-hearted milkman,
In woe I'm arrayed,
Through keeping the company of
A young servant maid--

and so forth. And then came the chorus, which has this advantage over
all other choruses ever written, that the most tuneless singer on earth
(such as myself) and the most shamefaced (I am autobiographical again)
can help to swell, at any rate, the notable opening of it, and thus
ensure the success of the rest.

That evening, as I say, was more than twenty years ago, and I had
thought in the interval little enough of the song until the other pretty
Perkins suggested it; but I need hardly say that the next day came a
further reminder of it (since that is one of the queer rules of life) in
the shape of a Chicago weekly paper with the information that America
knows "Pretty Polly Perkins" too.

The ballads of a nation for the most part respect their nationality, but
now and then there is free trade in them. It has been so with "Pretty
Polly Perkins"; for it seems that, recognizing its excellence, an
American singer prepa