When he was young, his parents saw (as parents by the million see)
That Rollo had an intellect of quite unequaled brilliancy;
They started in his training from the hour of his nativity,
And carefully they cultivated every bright proclivity.
At eight, he ate up authors like a literary cannibal,
At nine he mastered Latin as the Latins mastered Hannibal;
At ten he knew astronomy and differential calculus,
And at eleven could dissect the tiniest animalculus.
At twelve, he learned orthometry, and started in to master all
The different kinds of poetry, the lyric and the pastoral,
The epic and dramatic, the descriptive and didactical,
With lessons theoretical and exercises practical.
Music he learned—the old and sweet, the up-to-date and hideous;
He painted like Apelles and he modeled like a Phidias;
In language he was polyglot, in rhetoric Johnsonian,
In eloquence Websterian, in diction Ciceronian.
At last, with learning that would set an ordinary head agog,
His education far outshone his most proficient pedagog;
And so he entered life, with all his lore to lift the lid for him—
And what do you imagine that his erudition did for him?
Alas! I fear the truth will shock you, rather than amuse you all—
To those who’ve read this sort of verse, the sequel is unusual.
This man (it’s hard on humor, for it breaks the well known laws of it!)
Was happier for his learning, and a great success because of it!
“HALCYON DAYS”
Ere yet the giants of modern science had gone a-slumming in smelly
slums,
And through the Ghettos and lazarettos had put in plumbing (and pulled
out plums!)
When wily wizards in inky vizards employed their talents at homicide,
And poisoned goblets for faithless squablets by knightly gallants were
justified;
When maids were fairest, and baths were rarest, and thaumaturgy was
wrought by dames,
When courts were rotten and faith forgotten, and none but clergy could
write their names—
When he who flouted the Church, or doubted, would find his neck fast in
hempen ruff,
And saint and sinner thought eggs for dinner and beer for breakfast the
proper stuff;
When men were scary of witch and fairy, of haunted castle, of spook and
elf,
When every mixer of cough-elixir was thought a vassal of Nick himself;
When income taxes and prophylaxis and Comic Sections were yet unborn,
When Leagues of Nations and Spring Vacations and Fall Elections were
held in scorn—
When all brave fellows would fight duellos with sword and dagger, with
lance and mace,
When good men guzzled until, clean fuzzled, they’d reel and stagger
about the place;
When pious journeys and jousts and tourneys brought high adventure and
secret tryst,
When knives were many, but forks not any—’twas fist to trencher, and
mouth to fist!—
Oh, men had chances for true romances, for fame and glory, and knightly
acts ...
(And childish quarrels and beastly morals, if song and story would stick
to facts!)
_Franklin P. Adams_
Franklin P. Adams, better known to the readers of his column as F.
P. A., was born at Chicago, Illinois, November 15, 1881. He attended
the University of Michigan (1899-1900) and, after a brief career as
an insurance agent, plunged into journalism. Adams had already been
an ardent contributor to B. L. T.’s “A Line o’ Type or Two” and, in
1903, he began conducting a column of his own on the Chicago
_Journal_. Late in 1904, he came to New York, running his “Always in
Good Humor” section on _The Evening Mail_ until 1914, when he
started “The Conning Tower” for the New York _Tribune_.
Adams is the author of five volumes of a light verse that is not
only skilful but energetic as well as facile. _Tobogganing on
Parnassus_ (1909), _In Other Words_ (1912), _By and Large_ (1914),
_Weights and Measures_ (1917) and _Something Else Again_ (1920)
reveal a spirit which is essentially one of mockery. One admires
these books for their impudent—and faithful—paraphrases of Horace
and Propertius, for their last line twists _à la_ O. Henry, (with
whom Adams wrote a comic opera that never reached New York), for the
ease with which their author springs his surprises and, perhaps most
of all, for the healthy satire that runs sharply through all of his
colloquial and dexterous lines.