The World, December 25, 1906
The Thought-Reader.
The Zancigs are a wondrous pair:
Of that there’s not a doubt.
Your inmost thoughts ere you’re aware
They subtly ferret out.
You ask them what is in your mind:
They give an answer, quick . . .
But, after all, I, too, I find,
Can do the Zancig trick.
’Twas at a dance the other night.
Around the room I swept,
Too careless (for my heart was light)
To look just where I stepped.
My eye was bright, my smile was bland;
I was a great success . . .
A noise like distant thunder, and
I’d torn my partner’s dress.
She gently said, “Don’t mention it.”
She murmured “Not at all”:
It didn’t matter, not a bit;
The damage done was small.
Beneath a smile her wrath she hid:
Her speech was mild, not stern . . .
Just then I caught her eye . . . and did
My big thought-reading “turn.”
Printed unsigned in The World; title entered by Wodehouse in Money Received for Literary Work for December 26; McIlvaine mistranscribed this as December 6.