My Graduate Wife

Fair of form and fair of feature,

O, she is a pretty creature,

In complexion she can beat your

     Damsel from the Orient;

She can paint or make a statue,

With a ball club she can bat you,

She can ride a wheel straight at you,

     She can wrestle of invent.

She is up to date on Plato,

She can bake a sweet potato,

She can draw a bow so straight oh

     That her dart will split the line;

She can leap her horse o’er ditches,

She has eyes like any witch’s,

But she cannot sew two stitches

     On these pantaloons of mine.

Aug. 17, ‘96

Pub. in N.Y. World,

June 20, 1897

                (originally ‘Heiress And Poet’)