ed,
When--bang!--without any warning
A joke came into my head.
'Twas brilliant, awfully funny,
It flashed through my drowsy brain,
It was worth--oh, a lot of money!--
I chuckled again and again.

I thought how I might employ it,
I laughed till the tears rolled down,
Foreseeing how SMITH would enjoy it,
And how it would tickle BROWN.
I said, "I had best but hint it
To _them_, or they might purloin
This wonderful jest, then print it,
And between them divide the coin."

Late in the morn I awoke,--I
Puzzled with all my might
In vain to recall the joke I
Made in the silent night.
What _was_ it about? No dreamer
Am I! No--I think--I frown--
When next I make a screamer
In bed--_I will write it down_.

By the side of the bed a taper
Shall ever with matches be,
A pencil and piece of paper,
To note what occurs to me.
* * * * *
Since then I have tried, but the late joke,
As seen in my bedside scrawl,
Is always so poor,--that the great joke,
_I'm sure, was no joke at all!_

* * * * *

YES OR NO?

["The hand-writing of well-educated Ladies is often
disgracefully illegible."--_A Ladies' Journal_.]

Oh, never did lover in fable
In such a predicament stand,
A letter I wrote to my MABEL,
To ask for her heart and her hand,
With compliments worded so nicely,
A lifelong devotion I swore;
She's answered--and left me precisely
As wise as before!

It is true that I begged, when inditing
My note, a reply with all speed,
And MABEL, to judge from the writing,
Fulfilled my petition indeed!
The drift of this scrawl, so erratic,
I am wholly unable to guess--
It may be refusal emphatic,
Or can it be "Yes"?

"Affection" she'll feel for me "ever,"
But stay--if that blot is an "_n_"
It turns it at once into "never,"
Or is it a slip of the pen?
Her heart will a "truant (or true?) be,"
And what is the word just above?
It looks like--it cannot be--"booby"!
Perhaps it is "love."

A meeting must needs be awaited
To render these mysteries plain;
Perhaps in this letter she's stated
She never will see me again;
On one thing at least I've decided;--
Should she be my partner for life,
A type-writer shall be provided
For the use of my wife!