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.