How Beauty Contrived to Get Square with the Beast

Miss Guinevere PlattWas so beautiful thatShe couldn’t remember the dayWhen one of her swainsHadn’t taken the painsTo send her a mammoth bouquet.And the postman had found,On the whole of his round,That no one received such a lotOf bulky epistlesAs, waiting his whistles,The beautiful Guinevere got!

A significant signThat her charm was divineWas seen in society, whenThe chaperons sniffedWith their eyebrows alift:“Whatever’s got into the men?”There was always a manWho was holding her fan,And twenty that danced in details,And a couple of mourners,Who brooded in corners,And gnawed their mustaches and nails.

John Jeremy PlattWouldn’t stay in the flat,For his beautiful daughter he missed:When he’d taken his tub,He would hie to his club,And dally with poker or whist.At the end of a yearIt was perfectly clearThat he’d never computed the cost,For he hadn’t a pennyTo settle the manyTen thousands of dollars he’d lost!

F. Ferdinand FifeWas a student of life:He was coarse, and excessively fat,With a beard like a goat’s,But he held all the notesOf ruined John Jeremy Platt!With an adamant smileThat was brimming with guile,He said: “I am took with the faceOf your beautiful daughter,And wed me she ought ter,To save you from utter disgrace!”

Miss Guinevere PlattDidn’t hesitate atHer duty’s imperative call.When they looked at the brideAll the chaperons cried:“She isn’t so bad, after all!”Of the desolate menThere were something like tenWho took up political lives,And the flower of the flockWent and fell off a dock,And the rest married hideous wives!

But the beautiful wifeOf F. Ferdinand FifeWas the wildest that ever was known:She’d grumble and glare,Till the man didn’t dareTo say that his soul was his own.She sneered at his ills,And quadrupled his bills,And spent nearly twice what he earned;Her husband deserted,And frivoled, and flirted,Till Ferdinand’s reason was turned.

He repented too late,And his terrible fateUpon him so heavily sat,That he swore at the dayWhen he sat down to playAt cards with John Jeremy Platt.He was dead in a year,And the fair GuinevereIn society sparkled again,While the chaperons flutteredTheir fans, as they muttered:“She’s getting exceedingly plain!”

The Moral: Predicaments often are foundThat beautiful duty is apt to get round:But greedy extortioners better bewareFor dutiful beauty is apt to get square!