AN OPTIMIST.

Daily Chronicle, December 1, 1902
 

You say the days are dank and drear.
You hint that it will never clear.
You tell me with a horrid scowl
The weather’s something more than foul.
And on the subject, you confess,
You thought of writing to the Press.
You wonder, too, why I refrain.
Attention, then, and I’ll explain.

The showers which my temper vex
Likewise annoy the Duke of X.
The fogs which follow when it’s dry
Exasperate the Earl of Y.
And when the wind from off his head
Removes the hat of Marquis Z,
His silent comments are as free
As mine in such a case would be.

Professor B., I’ve not a doubt,
Gets very wet when he goes out.
The same disaster, I should say,
Has happened to Professor A.
I should, moreover, class with them
Musician L. and Poet M.
And yet these men of birth and brain
Scorn, you will notice, to complain.

And so, although the streets are damp,
And man is lost without his gamp, 1
And by the pavement hansoms rush,
Distributing unpleasant slush,
And though the days are drear and dank,
Shall such as I, when Brain and Rank
In noble silence bear their lot,
Expostulate? I fancy not.

P. J. W. 


Entered by Wodehouse as “The Optimist” in Money Received for Literary Work for this date.

1

gamp: An umbrella (from Mrs. Sarah Gamp, in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit)