Part 18 (2/2)

MY MOTOR CAP

[Motor-caps, we are informed, have created such a vogue in the Provinces, that ladies, women and factory girls may be seen wearing them on every occasion, though unconnected, in other respects, with modern methods of locomotion.]

A motor car I shall never afford With a gay vermilion bonnet, Of course I _might_ happen to marry a lord, But it's no good counting on it.

I have never reclined on the seat behind, And hurtled across the map, But my days are blest with a mind at rest, For I wear a motor cap.

I am done with Gainsborough, straw and toque, My dresses are bound with leather, I turn up my collar like auto-folk, And stride through the pitiless weather; With a pound of scrag in an old string bag, In a tram with a child on my lap, Wherever I go, to shop or a show, I wear a motor cap.

I don't know a silencer from a clutch, A sparking-plug from a bearing, But no one, I think, is in closer touch With the caps the women are wearing; I'm _au fait_ with the trim of the tailor-made brim, The crown and machine-st.i.tched strap; Though I've neither the motor, the sable-lined coat, nor The goggles--I wear the cap.

Ill.u.s.tration: No, this isn't a collection of tubercular microbes escaping from the congress; but merely the Montgomery-Smiths in their motor-car, enjoying the beauties of the country.

LINES BY A REJECTED AND DEJECTED CYCLIST

You do not at this juncture Feel, as I, the dreadful smart, And you scorn the cruel puncture Of the tyre of my heart!

But mayhap, at some Life-turning, When the wheel has run untrue, You will know why I was burning, And was scorched alone, by you!

Ill.u.s.tration: FINIS

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE

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