[“The broad humanity, the universal tone and quality of the best poetry, is one of the things which make it good for girls to read.”—“Harper’s Bazaar.”]

Her fatal folly she must rue,
 Her lot must needs be hard,
Who shirks, as many maidens do,
 The teachings of the bard.
’Tis he whose neat poetic vein
 Must guide, with subtle skill, as straight
The tale of Millicent and Jane
 My point will fitly illustrate.

Jane from her earliest years had fed
 On fiction’s cloying food:
Each badly-written tale she read
 Which seemed to suit her mood.
Six-shilling novels sapped her brain
 Which people—fond, but silly—sent:
So much for poor, misguided Jane;
 Now mark the case of Millicent.

She took no novel from the shelf,
 Unmoved she let them be:
She sensibly confined herself
 To poems (writ by me).
O’er these she pored, and these alone,
 A taste that proves her sanity.
She liked their “universal tone,”
 She loved their “broad humanity.”

Of course, you guess the sequel? Jane,
 Save by some lucky fluke,
Through life a spinster will remain:
 The other hooked a duke.
Not one of all our peers to-day
 Boasts income half so much as his.
She makes, as those who know her say,
 The very best of duchesses.

P. G. W.