The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)The A B C of Literature
A
Who gives to his fancy free scope;
In turret and tower
His characters cower,
Or make hairbreadth escapes by a rope.
From the land of the kilt and Glengarry;
We’ve read him to date,
And his next we await,
For we wonder whom Tommy will marry.
Who has a phenomenal brain;
His language amazes,
He writes in blue blazes,
And his verses are really insane.
And jolly good stories he gave us;
Van Bibber will do,
And Gallagher, too,
But from his war-notes the saints save us.
Whose “Keynotes” were rather good fun;
But her themes pathologic,
And terms pedagogic,
Are things the young persons should shun.
Who revels in plain epithet;
Her people of quality,
Though given to jollity,
Are the worst that we ever have met.
Who pours out his views by the gallon;
His books are improper,
But he’s a Hill-topper,
So he fears not the critic’s sharp talon.
As wise as the wisest of owls;
The subject of jokes
Of frivolous folks,
At which he good-naturedly growls.
Who knows about Moses and Aaron;
But in stories and tales
He signally fails,
For of artistic interest they’re barren.
Who expounds lofty motives and aims
With sentences long
And arguments strong,
And the most unpronounceable names.
Who, though he’s accounted a stripling,
Writes stories and rimes
Right up to the times
About loving and fighting and tippling.
Who recently saw, with a pang,
That a man up in Maine
Stole the work of his brain,
And he gave him a lengthy harangue.
Whose dramas are graveyards in ink;
Abstract, esoteric,
Symbolic, hysteric—
To read him would drive us to drink.
Who pictures the terrible wo
In store for the race
Since we’ve fallen from grace,
And surely the Doctor should know.
Whose writings grow finer and finer;
She certainly seems
To be given to dreams
Of which she’s the only diviner.
Who writes of the North, where it’s darker;
His “Pretty Pierre”
Is drawn with great care,
But to “Valmond” he isn’t a marker.
At home on a staff or a crew;
With vigor and skill
He handles a quill,
Or paddles his well-loved canoe.
Who really deserves a medallion
That his “Fancies” and “Quest”
Were never suppressed;
But they ought to be writ in Italian.
Who marital happiness banned;
Her public she vexes
With problems of sexes
Which most of us can’t understand.
Whose works we with wonder regard. He
Has written for years,
But it somehow appears
His moral convictions were tardy.
To praise him ’twould surely beseem us;
We’ve contracted a habit
Of quoting Br’er Rabbit,
Or poor old Br’er Wolf in extremis.
Who wouldn’t be much of a loss,
For her “Woman Who Wouldn’t”
Or Couldn’t or Shouldn’t,
Is nothing but driveling dross.
By whom we are awfully bored;
“Robert Elsmere” we stood,
And “Marcella” was good,
But when “Tressady” came we were floored.
Who signs any name but his own;
And though nobody claims
“The Descendant” and “James,”
In their pages good writing is shown.
Of whom our own critics are jealous,
But in epigram keen,
Free from malice or spleen,
Those foreigners seem to excel us.