Son, Aged Three
Years and Five Months _Thomas Hood_ 941
Little Mamma _Charles Henry Webb_ 943
The Comical Girl _M. Pelham_ 946
Bunches of Grapes _Walter Ramal_ 947

XVI: IMMORTAL STANZAS

The Purple Cow _Gelett Burgess_ 948
The Young Lady of Niger _Unknown_ 948
The Laughing Willow _Oliver Herford_ 948
Said Opie Reed _Julian Street_ and _James_
_Montgomery Flagg_ 948
Manila _Eugene F. Ware_ 949
On the Aristocracy of Harvard _Dr. Samuel G. Bushnell_ 949
On the Democracy of Yale _Dean Jones_ 949
The Herring _Sir Walter Scott_ 949
If the Man _Samuel Johnson_ 949
The Kilkenny Cats _Unknown_ 950
Poor Dear Grandpapa _D'Arcy W. Thompson_ 950
More Walks _Richard Harris Barham_ 950
["_Thomas Ingoldsby_"]
Indifference _Unknown_ 950
Madame Sans Souci _Unknown_ 950
A Riddle _Unknown_ 951
If _Unknown_ 951

THE BOOK OF

HUMOROUS VERSE

I

BANTER

THE PLAYED-OUT HUMOURIST

Quixotic is his enterprise and hopeless his adventure is,
Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said;
The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries,
And every joke that's possible has long ago been made.
I started as a humourist with lots of mental fizziness,
But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse;
For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures and the good-will of the business
No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse.
And if anybody choose
He may circulate the news
That no reasonable offer I am likely to ref