Oliver Herford

“ THE RUBAIYAT OF BILLI KAISAM Surnamed the Tentbreaker
I
Ah, Franz! Could you and I with Gott conspire
To grab this sorry little globe entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to our heart’s desire?
II
You all know how, the world to overwhelm
I made a second Sparta of my realm
And “dropped the Pilot” from my ship of State
To lay my own mailed fist upon the helm. ”

“ In every quarter of the globe they have planted seeds of self-government which today are blossoming into an English-Speaking Union under the British and American Flags that embrace one-fourth of the surface of the earth. ”

“ All misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
If this little world to-night
Suddenly should fall thro’ space
In a hissing, headlong flight,
Shrivelling from off its face,
As it falls into the sun,
In an instant every trace
Of the little crawling things—
Ants, philosophers, and lice,
Cattle, cockroaches, and kings,
Beggars, millionaires, and mice,
Men and maggots all as one
As it falls into the sun—
Who can say but at the same
Instant from some planet far
A child may watch us and exclaim:
“See the pretty shooting star!” ”

“ Yet should I draw him you would quail,
So in his place I draw a veil.
O stars, that from Creation's birth
Have winked at everything on earth,
Who shine where poets fear to tread,
Relate the story in my stead! ”

“ In Darkest Africa
At evening when the lamp is lit,
The tired Human People sit
And doze, or turn with solemn looks
The speckled pages of their books.
Then I, the Dangerous Kitten, prowl
And in the Shadows softly growl,
And roam about the farthest floor
Where Kitten never trod before.
And, crouching in the jungle damp,
I watch the Human Hunter’s camp,
Ready to spring with fearful roar
As soon as I shall hear them snore.
[Pg 52] And then with stealthy tread I crawl
Into the dark and trackless hall,
Where ’neath the Hat-tree’s shadows deep
Umbrellas fold their wings and sleep.
A cuckoo calls—and to their dens ”

“ CHAPTER XVI GOVERNMENTS OF THE GLOBE
The best definition of Government may be found in Wordsworth’s lines:
“The simple plan
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can.”
In every community on Earth, the strongest, the craftiest or the wealthiest of the male inhabitants conspire to compel their weaker, stupider or poorer brothers and sisters to pay them for the privilege of remaining on earth.
Government by the Strongest is called an Absolute Monarchy. ”

“ But a motto is like a cure for a cold which is only good to cure a cold that has not yet been caught, and the shrinking one is already as good as caught and his perfectly splendid slogan is of no more use than an icebox to an Esquimaux or a fur coat in Hell.
The Leap-Year Bachelor’s only hope is to feign death. Like the Bear in Æsop, the Female of the Species Human has no use for any but a “live one.” ”

“ Mail-fisted Kaiser Bill,
You are a seraph beaming,
An angel of good-will.
But tho’ we can’t deny, sir,
You’re hopelessly outclassed,
You’ve one thing on the Kaiser,
Which is, tho’ first and last
[20]
A failure as a devil,
Yet boast of this you can:
You were always on the level—
And—you are a gentleman! ”

“ But let not Europe palpitate
For fear of an Art Syndicate.
There are more Rembrandts, strange to say,
Than ever were in Rembrandt's day;
And statues "planted" in the sand
Will always equal the demand. ”

“ The Boldest Metaphor grows tame;
Superlatives abjectly crawl
Back to their lexicon in shame,
And Synonyms in shrieking chorus
Take refuge in the deep Thesaurus.
But language has its Pioneers,
Who seek Fresh Words and Postures new,
Slang rushes in where Syntax fears
To tread—so I for Ade halloo,
And say (with George’s kind permission)
It was “A Heated Proposition.” ”

“ The Sea with its white teeth bites the edges of the continents into new shapes, as a child bites the edges of a biscuit. The glaciers file away the mountains into valleys and plains. Beneath the ocean busy insects are building [Pg 22] the foundations of new continents and, under the earth, Fiery Demons are ready at all times to burst forth and help to destroy the old ones. ”

“ Thus I heard the poet croon,
To the month of roses sweet,
His song with barometric feet.
Perfect days I own are rare—
All depends on how you fare.
Can a day be perfect to
The rose that has not sipped the dew? ”

“ Could the savage rite, described by Strabo, depressing as it must have been, by any possibility be as gloomy as the Testimonial Banquet of today? Is the Guest of Honor, sitting at the High Table feigning unconsciousness, the miserable target for asphyxiating bombs of wit, of anecdote, and of reminiscence—is he any less to be pitied than the deceased relative of the Ivernian dinner? Yet we call ourselves civilized; we think it barbaric to hang a fellow being for anything short of murder. ”

“ When I grow up I mean to be
A Lion large and fierce to see.
I’ll mew so loud that Cook in fright
Will give me all the cream in sight.
And anyone who dares to say
“Poor Puss” to me will rue the day.
Then having swallowed him I’ll creep
Into the Guest Room Bed to sleep. ”

“ Of people of every kind and class—
Matrons, men, and misses,
Ladies and gentlemen, old and new,
Lads and lasses, and children too,
Elderly men with elderly wives—
Hustling and bustling for their lives. ”

“ And fill the night with noise and smell.
The stars of Heaven look down, and say:
"So this is Independence Day!
Poor earth-born stars, it makes us sad
To see your fire work like mad
To make a Human Holiday. ”

“ Hurray! We’re going to make it hot
For all the bloody Hohenzollern lot,
And when we get the Kaiser we’ll present him to his Gott,
As we go marching to Berlin!
(Drums) Berlin! Berlin!
Berlin! Berlin! Berlin! ”

“ The Capitol of the United States is Washington—named after a famous Britisher who won American Independence from George the III, the fat German King of unsound mind, then holding down the English Throne.
New York is the tallest and the noisiest city in the world. It contains over Five million people speaking a Babel of twenty different languages besides English.
The inhabitants of America are the most Moral and Patriotic people in the World, and their army is second to none in bravery and won the World War. ”

“ One amiable gentleman in particular I always look for and hail with delight when I find myself sitting opposite to him. He is an Italian, I take it, from his appearance, and from Naples, to judge by his accent, which, though I have never heard his voice, is depicted as plainly as the nose on his face.
Neither do I know his name, but I call him Signor Pizzicato, for it is quite evident that nature intended him for an Operatic career. How he ever came to be a barber, I cannot imagine. ”

“ There is no profit to be made out of a change in the geography of a trouser-crease. It is purely a matter of self-determination on the part of the inhabitant of the trousers.
If there were no more financial profit to be gained by the remaking of the creases in the map of Europe than is to be got out of changing the trouser-crease, there would be no call for a League of Nations.
Should some inventive tailor (inventive tailor!) devise a crease that could be woven into the very being of the Trouser, then it would be a very different matter. ”

“ It takes much longer to write a Geography than, according to Moses, it took to create the World which it is the Geographer’s business to describe; and since the Critic has been added to the list of created beings, it is no longer the fashion for the Author to pass judgment on his own work. ”

“ The gods had much to answer for in the days of Hesiod, and man had much to put up with. Anything, good or evil, that befell him, from the measles to melancholia—from fortitude to dancing—was a gift of the gods, wished on him as a token of their high esteem, [88] or otherwise. All man had to do was to accept the gift, and, if it chanced to be boils, as in the case of Job, he might be thankful it was nothing worse.
Today we view a gift of the gods with distrust. ”

“ The only Flower that succeeds in climbing the high wall is the little flower of Pekoe and her sisters who leave their Porcelain Paradise to cheer without inebriating the dull people of the outside world. ”