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قراءة كتاب Misrepresentative Women
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اللغة: English
الصفحة رقم: 4
unobtrusive ways,
In sunny Stratford’s guide-books graven,
Her brilliance, lighting with its rays
The birthplace of the Swan of Avon,
Must cause the Bard as deep a pain
As his resemblance to Hall Caine.
Mere ordinary mortals ask,
With no desire for picking quarrels,
Who gave her the congenial task
Of judging other people’s morals?
Who bade her flay her fellow-men
With such a frankly feline pen?
And one may seek, and seek in vain.
The social set she loves to mention,
Those offspring of her fertile brain,
Those creatures of her fond invention.
(She is, or so it would appear,
Unlucky in her friends, poor dear!)
For tho’, like her, they feel the sway
Of claptrap sentimental glamour,
And frequently, like her, give way
To lapses from our English grammar,
The victims of her diatribes
Are not the least as she describes.
To restaurants they seldom go,
Just for the sake of over-eating;
While ladies don’t play bridge, you know,
Entirely for the sake of cheating;
And husbands can be quite nice men,
And wives are faithful, now and then.
Were she to mingle with her ink
A little milk of human kindness,
She would not join, I dare to think,
To chronic social color-blindness
An outlook bigoted and narrow
As that of some provincial sparrow.
But still, perhaps, it might affect
Her literary circulation,
If she were tempted to neglect
Her talent for vituperation;
Since work of this peculiar kind
Delights the groundling’s curious mind.
For while, of course, from day to day,
Her popularity increases,
As, in an artless sort of way,
She tears Society to pieces,
Her sense of humor, so they tell us,
Makes even Alfred Austin jealous!
Yet even bumpkins, by and by,
(Such is the spread of education)
May view with cold, phlegmatic eye
The fruits of her imagination,
And learn to temper their devotion
With slight, if adequate, emotion.
·····
Dear Miss Corelli:—Should your eyes
Peruse this page (’tis my ambition!),
Be sure that I apologize
In any suitable position
For having weakly imitated
The style that you yourself created.
I cannot fancy to attain
To heights of personal invective
Which you, with subtler pen and brain,
Have learnt to render so effective;
I follow dimly in your trail;
Forgive me, therefore, if I fail!
“Were she to mingle with her ink
A little milk of human kindness”
Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy
Have you a pain all down your back?
A feeling of intense prostration?
Are you anæmic, for the lack
Of proper circulation?
With bloodshot eye and hand unsteady?
Pray send at once for Mrs. Eddy.
The Saint and Prophetess is she
Of what is known as Christian Science;
And you can lean on Mrs. E.
With absolute reliance;
For she will shortly make it plain
That there is no such thing as pain.
The varied ailments on your list
Which cause you such extreme vexation
Are nothing more, she will insist,
Than mere imagination.
’Tis so with illness or disease;
Nothing exists ... except her fees!
A friend of mine had not been taught
This doctrine, I regret to say.
He fell downstairs, or so he thought,
And broke his neck, one day.
Had Mrs. Eddy come along,
She could have shown him he was wrong.
She could have told him (or his wraith)
That stairs and necks have no existence,
That persons with sufficient faith
Can fall from any distance,
And that he wasn’t in the least
What local papers called “deceased.”
Of ills to which the flesh is heir
She is decidedly disdainful;
But once, or so her friends declare,
Her teeth became so painful
That, tho’ she knew they couldn’t be,
She had them taken out, to see.
Afflictions of the lame or halt,
Which other people view with terror,
To her denote some moral fault,
Some form of mental error.
While doctors probe or amputate,
She simply heals you while you wait.
My brother, whom you may have seen,
Possessed a limp, a