gilt-edged
Defender of your country,
Ponder it, O Muddied One,
And be wise.

TO A PUBLISHER

My dear Sir,—
In the whole round
Of animated nature
I am acquainted
With nothing or nobody
Who is, generally speaking,
So gay, gaudy, and interesting
As yourself.
From my youth up
I have been taught to look upon a publisher
As a very great person indeed.
When I was young and courted him
He it was drew from me
(As morn from Memnon)
Rivers of melody;
The which, however,
He took good care
Not to glorify with his imprimatur.
In those days
I looked upon publishing as a trade
And poetry as a profession.
Recently I have become wise,
And I feel in the heart of me
That publishing is a profession
And poetry a trade.
In spite of all that has been said to the contrary,
Barabbas
Certainly was not a publisher.
I have not had time to look him up,
But I feel quite sure
That he was not a professional man.
Besides,
If he was a publisher,
Why did he not publish something?
Echo and the Publishers' Association
No doubt answer
"Why?"
I sometimes think I should like to be a publisher myself.
It must be rather nice
To know for a fact
How many copies
Mr. So-and-so, and Mr. So-and-so, and Mr. So-and-so
Really do sell,
And how many "A second large edition"
And "Tenth impression"
Really mean.
It must be rather nice, also,
To go off to Switzerland every year
(With your wife)
To attend the Publishers' Conference.
It must be rather nice, too,
To know of a surety
That when an author is making money
Some publisher or other
Is making just as much,
And not infrequently a trifle more,
On the same work.
We have learnt of late
Greatly to our disgust
That when a publisher dies rich
He has made his money out of Apollinaris.
This is hard on authors,
Who, between ourselves,
Are not by any means bad people,
And invariably take a kindly interest
In their publishers' welfare.
On the other hand,
You must admit, sir,
That a publisher seldom goes bankrupt,
And does not as a rule sleep
Under his own counter.
Once
I lent a publisher half a crown.
He paid it back.
The average author would have taken it
As money earned.
So that, on the whole,
I am inclined to like publishers,
And to set them down in my tablets
For
Useful persons.

TO AN HOTEL KEEPER

My dear Sir,—
Oft in the stilly night
My thoughts fly
In your direction,
For oft in the stilly night
It is my unfortunate habit
To have uncomfortable dreams,
And the worst of them
Runs to bankruptcy.
I have a horror of bankruptcy,
At any rate in my dreams.
I sometimes lie
Between the blankets
In a cold sweat
And for public examination as it were,
And the presiding genius of the court
Says to me, sepulchrally,
"To what do you attribute your financial rottenness?"
I fall into a colder sweat
And remark,
With a humility
Which becomes my unfortunate position,
"Sir, if you please,
I have been living at an hotel."
At this juncture of course
I come in for every sympathy:
The Court is with me,
The Court has been there itself;
There is not a dry eye about the place,
Every man present knows what I mean,
And his heart is touched accordingly.
Sir,
My dear Sir,
You also know what I mean;
In other words, you know
That I am the victim of a convention,
And that, when all is said that can be said,
You are the author of that convention.
As to the nature of that convention
We will put it this way:
One pound of steak
To the actual consumer
Should cost, say, 1s. 2d.
Trimmings
In the way of potatoes and peas might cost, say, 6d.,
Bread, 1d.,
Pepper, salt, and mustard, 1d.
(You will notice that I put a princely price on everything),
Total, 1s. 10d.
Fifty per cent. profit for you, let us say,
Would bring us up to 2s. 9d.
Really you ought to let one off for 2s. 9d.,
But what do you do?
Well,
So far as I can gather from your bills,
You lie awake at night
Debating with yourself
Whether you should charge one 3s. 6d. or 4s. 6d.
And you usually come to the conclusion
That it will be best
For all parties concerned
To charge one 5s.
If one expostulates,
You remark
With hauteur
That you thought you were dealing with a gentleman.
You are quite correct in this surmise.
But—
One pays,
And you pocket the difference.
Then, again, on one's bill
You put
Bed, 7s. 6d.
Which is cheap;
And I do not murmur;
But you also put
Attendance, 2s. 6d.;
Coffee in bedroom before rising, 1s.;
Bath, 1s. 6d.;
This is just 5s. too much,
Especially in view of the fact
That the attendance wears dirty shirts,
That the bath
Is lukewarm if you order it cold
And lukewarm if you order it hot;
And that the coffee before rising
Doesn't cost you a farthing.
I am aware, of course,
That all this is very mean
And low down
On my part,
But frankly
Your rapacity
Matters not so much to me
As to yourself.
People come once to your establishment,
They read your bill,
Pay your prices
And tip your dirty-shirted waiters,
And go away
And forget to come back.
Hence
You are bound to charge
The next man that comes along
As much extra as he will stand,
And by slow degrees
Your establishment
Is becoming
A by-word
And a warning.
My dear Sir,
Have a shilling bottle of wine
(For which you charge me 3s. 6d.)
At your own expense,
Consult with your wife,
And make up your mind
Never to charge
More than 2s.
For 9d. worth of goods.
Honesty is its own reward—
It is really.

TO THE MAN WITH A GUN

My dear Sir,—
I suppose you are having an excellent time just now.
There are a large number of counties
In England and Scotland,
And I am not acquainted with one of them
Wherein your bang-bang
And puffs of smoke
And red-faced men with dogs
Are not to be encountered.
You like it;
It is very nice;
And really, when you come to think of it,
It is what the counties were made for.
In the history books
They were wont to say
Of a certain Norman monarch,
That he loved the red deer
As if he were their brother.
Of you it may safely be said
That you love the red grouse
And the brown partridge.
As if you were a poulterer.
You are a sportsman.
The man who first went out with a gun
To shoot game
Probably did it on the sly.
Had he been caught
He would no doubt have been regarded
By the sportsmen of his day
With the same contempt
That you yourself indulge
For the unprincipled blackguard, Sir,
Who shoots foxes.
But time and the gunsmiths
Have changed all that;
And now you are a sportsman,
A shooter of birds
For the London market.
You are also a gunner,
And you kill things.
Oh! why do you not go
And live at Gunners-bury?
Bad joke?
Well, I know it is.
But I assure you, my dear Sir,
That it is not half so bad as I can make them
When I try.
To come now to the region
Of practical politics,
Let me explain to you right