Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ Made some comments, sotto voce,
(Which the publishers have bidden me to shun!)
Matilda Maud Mackenzie
said, as if she meant to scold:
“I never! Why, you forward thing!
Now ain’t you awful bold!”
Just a glance he paused to give her,
And his head was seen to clutch,
Then he darted to the river,
And he dived to beat the Dutch!
While the wrathful maiden panted:
“I don’t think he was enchanted!”
(And he really didn’t look it overmuch!)
The Moral: In one’s language one conserva-
tive should be:
Speech is silver, and it never should be free! ”