H.M.S. "PINAFORE"
mer. The gipsy blood that ran in her veins gave her a curious power of prophesying backwards. I mean that she could foretell what you were, and remember what you will be, which is quite unlike the usual kind of fortune-telling that comes of crossing a gipsy's hand with a sixpence. She also possessed a remarkable power of expressing herself in rhyme without ever having to hunt for the last words of her lines, which gave a peculiar force and emphasis to her words, and convinced everybody that what she said was supernatural, and consequently true.
So, getting gradually more and more angry with Captain Corcoran for despising her, as she called it (though he was the last person in the world to despise anybody) she summoned her remarkable rhyming ability to her aid in the following utterances:
Things are seldom what they seem (said she)
Skim-milk masquerades as cream;
High-lows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacocks' feathers.
Rhyming is rather infectious, so Captain Corcoran, catching the disease, replied (rather puzzled)
Very true,
So they do!
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