Some years ago a babe was born—­I need not name the place—­
  With a puffy, pasty, podgy, gutta-percha sort of face,
  Which wrinkles sub-divided into funny little bits,
  While beady eyes peered cunningly behind two tiny slits.

  His nose was like a mushroom of the foreign button sort,
  His form was quaint and chubby, and his legs were extra short;
  That his nurse spoke like SAPPHIRA, I have always had a fear,
  When she said he was a “beauty,” and a “pretty little dear.”

  Yes, such remarks were really of the truth, a dreadful stretch,
  For, in point of fact, that baby was a hideous little wretch;
  And in course of time he grew up—­though a loving mother’s joy—­
  Into quite a champion specimen of the genius “ugly boy.”

  At school his teasing comrades gave him many comic names,
  And he became the victim of all sorts of naughty games;
  Nor did the master like him, for he felt that such a face,
  Mid a row of ruddy youngsters, was extremely out of place.

  In time, his father placed him in the City—­as a clerk—­
  Where his personal appearance excited much remark;
  But he fell out with his principal, whose customers complained,
  That his clerk was making faces, and said “Bosh!” when he explained.

  On perceiving from the office that he never would be missed,
  As Mr. GILBERT puts it, he determined to enlist;
  And so one summer afternoon he started forth in search
  Of a Sergeant who perambulates close by St. Martin’s Church.

  The Sergeant burst out laughing when he’d uttered his request,
  And declared that, of a batch of jokes he knew, this was the best;
  “’Tis a pity you’re too short, my lad,” he then went on to say,
  “For wid that face ye’d froighten ivery inimy away!”

  In a fountain which played handy—­it was near Trafalgar Square—­
  He was rushing off to drown himself, the victim of despair,
  When he knocked against a person he’d not seen for quite an age,
  Who had left his home some years before, and gone upon the Stage.

  To this friend he soon narrated his distressing tale of woe,
  And declared his case was hopeless.  But the actor said, “Not so. 
  There’s one thing, my fine fellow, that as yet you haven’t tried,
  Where your face will be your fortune, and a pound or two beside.

  “With a mouth like yours to grin with, and your too delicious
          squint,
  And the ears that Nature’s given you with such a lack of stint,—­
  No matter what an author may provide you with to speak,
  You’re a ready-made Comedian—­with your fifty quid a week.”

  And it was so.  Though he started at a figure rather less
  Than the one that I have mentioned, still the truth I but express
  When I say he now is earning such a wage as wouldn’t shock
  A respectable Archbishop or a fashionable jock.