Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3811/Diplomacy
(Yawning, though rude, is, according to the doctors, an extremely healthy exercise.)
I have a friend who wrote a book
And begged me to peruse it,
And bluntly state the view I took—
Encourage or abuse it.
I want, he said, the truth alone,
But said it in a hopeful tone.
And begged me to peruse it,
And bluntly state the view I took—
Encourage or abuse it.
I want, he said, the truth alone,
But said it in a hopeful tone.
Perceiving there was no escape,
With Chapter I. I led off;
Page 2 provoked my earliest gape,
At 3 I yawned my head off,
At 4 I cast the thing away
Unto some dim and distant day.
With Chapter I. I led off;
Page 2 provoked my earliest gape,
At 3 I yawned my head off,
At 4 I cast the thing away
Unto some dim and distant day.
For weeks I racked my harassed brain
For something kind and ruthful,
To spare his feelings and remain
Comparatively truthful
(I'm very often troubled by
My inability to lie).
For something kind and ruthful,
To spare his feelings and remain
Comparatively truthful
(I'm very often troubled by
My inability to lie).
"Dear Charles," I wrote him in the end,
"I fear no contradiction
When I declare that you have penned
A healthy woik of fiction.
I am, I candidly admit,
A sounder man through reading it."
"I fear no contradiction
When I declare that you have penned
A healthy woik of fiction.
I am, I candidly admit,
A sounder man through reading it."