Dan the Dosser, a reglar Old Clo’
at dead langwidges, classicks, and such,
Says it’s met’em-see-kosis—a
thing as to me, mate, is jest Double Dutch,
Means a soul on the shift, as it were,
Charlie, tryin’ fust this form,
then that,
So that ‘Arry, who once was
a donkey, might some o’ these days be a rat!
Leastways so the Dosser explains it, of
course it is all Tommy rot.
Rummy thing ‘ow a cram o’
the Classicks do make yer a reglar crackpot.
Dosser hain’t no more genuine savvy,
he hain’t, than a ‘aporth o’ snuff;
But he’s up to the lips-like in
Latin, and similar old-fashioned stuff.
Seems some old Latin cove called cat
ULLUS—a gayish old dog I should
say
Knew a party called Arrius!—bless
’im!—as lived in that rum Roman day,
And cat ULLUS he hups and he scribbles
a “carmen”—wich then meant a
song,
Not a hopera, Charlie—about
him along of some haitches gone wrong.
Like cat ULLUS’s cheek, if
you arsk me! That haitch bizness gives me the
’ump.
There isn’t a hignerent mug, or
a mealy-mouthed mutton-faced pump
Who ’as learned ’ow to garsp
hout a He-haw! in regular la-di-dah style,
But’ll look down on “’Arry
the haitchless,” and wrinkle his snout in a
smile.
Yah! Haitches ain’t heverythink,
Charlie, no, not by a jugfull they hain’t.
And yer “H-heah! H-hold
my H-h-horse!” sort o’ sniffers
would screw
hout big D.’s
from a saint.
What’s the hodds, arter all?
If you’re fly to the true hend of Life, wich
is larks,
You may pop in yer haitches permiskus,
in spite of the prigs’ rude remarks.
The old Roman geeser, cat ULLUS,
who wrote that de Arrio bosh,
Wos a poet, of course, and a classick,
two things as to-day will not wash;
Bet yer boots Master ARRIUS ’ad
’im on toast, the old mug, every time,
And that’s why he took his revenge
like, in verse without reason or
rhyme.
Young ARRIUS’s huncle, he tells
us, talked similar patter. No doubt!
Havunculus hejus, I reckon, knew
wot he was dashed well about.
I say bully for LIBER, and chance it.
’Tain’t whether you say Hill or
’Ill,
It’s whether you’re able to
climb it; and that’s where the prigs git
their pill.
There’s a party who, in the St.
James’s Gazette, dear old pal, ’tother
day,
Took my name, not pertikler in
vain, though, and called hisself “’ARRY
B.A.”
Wrote smart, he did, CHARLIE, and slick-like,
but “’ARRY B.A.” isn’t Me!
No fear! ’ARRY’s not
sech an A double S as to want a “Degree.”
I know wot’s wuth knowin’,
I reckon, and wot I don’t know I can learn,
Without mortar-board ’ats and black
bedgowns, or stuffing my brains till
they turn.
To be well in the know is my maxum,
but as for “Compulsory Greek,”
Would it give me, I wonder, a hextry “compulsory”
two quid a week?