What do I care if sunny Spring
Come now at last with balmy weather?
What do I care for anything?
I hate existence altogether.
It makes me almost mad, in truth,
This awful aching in my tooth.
What do I care for wealth or fame,
Or woman's charms the most entrancing?
Despised or loved, it's all the same.
You would not catch me even glancing
At any face you ever saw;
I'm only thinking of my jaw.
What do I care if Trunks are low,
Argentines flat, Home Rails neglected?
Though mines may come and mines may go,
I'm indescribably dejected.
They may be, I am, "dull" and "weak."
Confound my throbbing, swollen cheek!
What do I care which party's in,
To take more pennies from my income,
Or, if from tax on beer or gin,
Or milk and water extra "tin" come?
My thoughts are "in another place";
This aching spreads throughout my face.
What do I care for any play,
For dance or dinner, song or supper?
With pangs like these I can't be gay.
They spread from lower jaw to upper,
Across my face, as I have said,
And now attack my hapless head.
What do I even care if She
May frown upon her wretched lover,
And like another more than me?
Such pangs I might in time recover.
I do not care, I do not know;
I'm aching now from top to toe.
* * * * *
[Illustration: A LEFT-HANDED COMPLIMENT.
"BACK AGAIN, DOCTOR? I'VE BEEN _SO_ MUCH BETTER SINCE YOU WENT AWAY!"]
* * * * *
Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING has written another Barrack-room Ballad (see _Pall
Mall Gazette_ of Thursday last). It is called _The Men that fought at
Minden_, and is perhaps the most coarse and unattractive specimen of
verse that this great young man has put forth yet--a jumble of words
without a trace of swing or music. All this Tommy Atkins business,
with its "Rookies" and its "Johnny Raws," and its affectation of
intimate knowledge of the common soldier's inmost feelings, is about
played out, and the interest in it is not likely to be revived by such
jargon as _The Men that fought at Minden_. Besides, didn't Lord GEORGE
SACKVILLE fight(?) at Minden?
* * * * *
EXPLAINED AT LAST.--The (Zoo-) logical excuse given for the
boa-constrictor when he swallowed his companion, was that "he only
wanted a snack for luncheon." It had been hinted that he found "the
other one" such a "boa" at meal times that he was determined to put
him down. But this is not the fact.
* * * * *