THOSE Roman Fathers, long ago,
Established a sublime tradition,
Who gave the Man Behind the Hoe
His proud proconsular position;
When Cincinnatus left his hens,
And beat his ploughshares into pens.

His modern prototype we see,
Descended from some humble attic,
The Presidential nominee
Of those whose views are Democratic;
From Millionaire to Billiard Marker
They plumped their votes for Central Parker.

A member of the sterner sex,
Possessing neither wealth nor beauty,
But gifted with a really ex —
– Traordinary sense of Duty;
In Honour's list I place him first, —
With Cæsar's Wife and Mr. Hearst.

From childhood's day this son of toil,
Since first he laid aside his rattle,
Was wont to cultivate the soil,
Or milk his father's kindly cattle;
To groom the pigs, drive crows away,
Or teach the bantams how to lay.

This sprightly lad, his parents' pet,
With tastes essentially bucolic,
Eschewed the straightcut cigarette,
And shunned refreshments alcoholic;
His simple pleasure 'twas to plumb
The deep-laid joys of chewing gum.

As local pedagogue he next
Attained to years of indiscretion,
To preach the Solomonian text
So popular with that profession,
Which honours whom (and what) it teaches
More in th' observance than the breeches.

The sprightly Parker soon one sees,
Head of a legal institution,
Enjoying huge retaining fees
As counsel for the prosecution.
(Advice to lawyers, meum non est, —
Get on, get honour, then get honest!)

Behold him, then, like comet, shoot
Beyond the bounds of birth or station,
And gain, as jurist of repute,
A continental reputation.
(Don't mix him with that "Triple Star"
Which lights a more unworthy "bar.")

A proud position now is his,
A judge, arrayed in moral ermine,
As from the Bench he sentences
His fellow-man, and other vermin,
And does his duty to his neighbour,
By giving him six months' hard labour.

On knotty questions of finance
He bears aloft the golden standard,
For he whose motto is "Advance!"
To baser coin has never pandered.
No eulogist of War is he,
"Retrenchment!" is his dernier cri.

But tho', to his convictions true,
With strength like concentrated Eno,
He did his very utmost to
Emancipate the Filipino,
A fickle public chose Another,
Who called the Coloured Coon his Brother.

Euclid

WHEN Egypt was a first-class Pow'r —
When Ptolemy was King, that is,
Whose benefices used to show'r
On all the local charities,
And by his liberal subscriptions
Was always spoiling the Egyptians —

The Alexandrine School enjoyed
A proud and primary position
For training scholars not devoid
Of geometric erudition;
Where arithmetical fanatics
Could even live in (mathem) – attics.

The best informed Historians name
This Institution the possessor
Of one who occupied with fame
The post of principal Professor,
Who had a more expansive brain
Than any man – before Hall Caine.

No complex sums of huge amounts
Perplexed his algebraic knowledge;
With ease he balanced the accounts
Of his (at times insolvent) College;
He was, without the least romance,
A very Blondin of Finance.

In pencil, on his shirt-cuff, he,
Without a moment's hesitation,
Elucidated easily
The most elab'rate calculation
(His washing got, I needn't mention,
The local laundry's best attention).

Behind a manner mild as mouse,
Blue-spectacled and inoffensive,
He hid a judgment and a nous
As overwhelming as extensive,
And cloaked a soul immune from wrong
Beneath an ample ong-bong-pong.

To rows of conscientious youths,
Whom 'twas his duty to take care of,
He loved to prove the truth of truths
Which they already were aware of;
They learnt to look politely bored,
Where modern students would have snored.

To show that Two and Two make Four,
That All is greater than a Portion,
Requires no dialectic lore,
Nor any cerebral contortion;
The public's faith in facts was steady,
Before the days of Mrs. Eddy.

But what was hard to overlook
(From which Society still suffers)
Was all the trouble Euclid took
To teach the game of Bridge to duffers.
Insisting, when he got a quorum,
On "Pons" (he called it) "Asinorum."

The guileless methods of his game
Provoked his partner's strongest strictures;
He hardly knew the cards by name,
But realised that some had pictures;
Exhausting ev'rybody's patience
By his perpetual revocations.

For weary hours, in deep concern,
O'er dummy's hand he loved to linger,
Denoting ev'ry card in turn,
With timid indecisive finger;
And stopped to say, at each delay,
"I really don't know what to play!"

He sought, at any cost, to win
His ev'ry suit in turn unguarding;
He trumped his partner's "best card in,"
His own egregiously discarding;
Remarking sadly, when in doubt,
"I quite forgot the King was out!"

Alert opponents always knew,
By what the look upon his face was,
When safety lay in leading through,
And where, of course, the fatal ace was;
Assuring the complete successes
Of bold but hazardous "finesses."

But nowadays we find no trace,
From distant Assouan to Cairo,
To mark the place where dwelt a race
Mistaught by so absurd a tyro;
And nothing but occult inscriptions
Recall the sports of past Egyptians.

Yes, "autre temps" and "autre moeurs,"
"Où sont indeed les neiges d'antan?"
The modern native much prefers
Debauching in some café chantant,
Nor ever shows the least ambition
To solve a single Proposition.

O Euclid, luckiest of men!
You knew no English interloper;
For Allah's Garden was not then
The pleasure-ground of Alleh Sloper,
Nor (broth-like) had your country's looks
Been spoilt by an excess of "Cooks."

The Nile to your untutored ears
Discoursed in dull but tender tones;
Not yours the modern Dahabeahs,
Supplied with strident gramophones,
Imploring, in a loud refrain,
Bill Bailey to come home again.

Your cars, the older-fashioned sort,
And drawn, perhaps, by alligators,
Were not the modern Juggernaut-
Child-dog-and-space-obliterators,
Those "stormy petrols" of the land
Which deal decease on either hand.

No European tourist wags
Defiled the desert's dusky face
With orange peel and paper bags,
Those emblems of a cultured race;
Or cut the noble name of Jones,
On tombs which held a monarch's bones.

O Euclid! Could you see to-day
The sunny clime you once frequented,
And note the way we moderns play
The game you thoughtfully invented,
The knowledge of your guilt would force yer
To feelings of internal nausea!