* * * * *

’Arriet.

A realistic rhapsody.

(WITH APOLOGIES TO MR. HENRY KENDATT, AUTHOR OF “ASTARTE,” IN THE “BOOKMAN.")

[Illustration:  (’Arriet.)]

  Across the wind-blown bridges,
      O look, lugubrious Night! 
  She comes, the red-haired beauty
      Illumined by gaslight! 
      By London’s dim gaslight! 
    So hush, ye cads, your roar! 
  Behind her plumes are waving
    Her oil’d fringe flaps before.

  O ’Arriet, Cockney sister,
      Your face is writhed with jeers;
  How awful is the angle
      Of those protuberant ears! 
      Those red, protuberant ears! 
    And your splay feet—­O lor!!! 
  My loud, my Cockney sister,
    Where oil’d fringe flops before!

  Ah, ’Arriet! gracious ’eavens,
      How your greased locks do glow! 
  I swoon!  The “hodoration”
      (I heard you call it so)
      Sickens my senses so;
    ’Tis “Citronel”—­no more,
  That scents, like a cheap barber’s,
    That oil’d fringe hung before.

  ’Arriet, my knowing darling,
      Your eyes a cross-watch keep,
  You’re togged in shop-girl’s fashion,
      Your cloak is bugled deep,
      Black-bugled broad and deep,
    With buttons dappled o’er,
  Good gr-racious! how it’s grown, too—­
    That oil’d fringe flopped before!

  That “bang” is awfully trying,
      That odour maddens me. 
  By Jingo! you’ve been dyeing
      Those rufous locks, I see,
      Those sandy locks, I see,
    They’re darker than of yore. 
  Avaunt!  I’d be forgetting
    That oil’d fringe flopped before.

* * * * *

Rather appropriate.

Under the heading “Military Education,” there appears in The Tablet, an advertisement concerning preparation for examinations at Woolwich and Sandhurst by “the Rev. E. Von ORSBACH, F.R.G.S., F.R.Hist.S., late Tutor to their Highnesses the Princes of Thurn-and-taxis.”  What a suggestive name for a tutor preparing young men for a Cavalry Regiment is “Von ORSBACH!” Not only would pupils surmount all difficulties of EUCLID’s propositions, but being brought up by Von ORSBACH, they would dare all “riders!” Then as to the Princes, his pupils, cannot we conceive of the first Prince Thurn how he has been turned out a perfect ’orseman by Von ORSBACH, and how it would tax all an Examiner’s ingenuity to pluck taxis.  Pity that when one Prince was called taxis the other wasn’t named rates.  But evidently this was an oversight.  A neat couplet might head this advertisement, and add to its attractiveness, as for instance:—­

  Every question, whatever they ax is,
  Will in its Thurn be answered by taxis. 
  Taxis and Thurn, for a win you’ll of course back,
  The pick of the stable, the trainer Von ORSBACH.