Little Ditties I

Winifred Waters sat and sighed
Under a weeping willow;
When she went to bed she cried,
Wetting all the pillow;

Kept on crying night and day,
Till her friends lost patience;
“What shall we do to stop her, pray?”
So said her relations.

Send her to the sandy plains,
In the zone called torrid:
Send her where it never rains,
Where the heat is horrid.

Mind that she has only flour
For her daily feeding;
Let her have a page an hour
Of the driest reading,–

Navigation, logarithm,
All that kind of knowledge,–
Ancient pedigrees go with ’em,
From the Heralds’ College.

When the poor girl has endured
Six months of this drying,
Winifred will come back cured,
Let us hope, of crying.

Then she will not day by day
Make those mournful faces,
And we shall not have to say,
“Wring her pillow-cases.”