A PROTEST.

Vanity Fair (UK), November 10, 1904
 

(Kleptomania is largely on the increase amongst women.—Daily Paper.)

Phyllis, your eyes are remarkably bright,
 And their colour an absolute dream.
But they shine with a strangely unscrupulous light,
 With a weird, kleptomaniac gleam.
I scorn to expostulate, carp, or repine,
 I don’t for a moment complain;
But they ought to be gazing, I feel, into mine,
 And they’re fixed on my watch and my chain.

Your hands are a theme for a laureate’s song,
 Their beauty no blemishes mar;
But your fingers, I note, are uncommonly long
 Shall I live to regret that they are?
When I grasp that right hand, which I’ve striven to win,
 To take you for better or worse,
Shall I feel that the left is abstracting my pin,
 Or groping about for my purse?

Forego, I implore, your nefarious skill;
 Turn over, I beg, a new leaf.
It’s pleasant to feel that you’re clever, but still,
 One shuns e’en the cleverest thief.
Many, indeed, are the treasures I own,
 With which I’m not anxious to part;
Pray leave all my property strictly alone,
 Content to have stolen my heart.