(A Ballad Of Broadmoor.)

They coaxed me up a hundred stairs, They lured me to their den, For me they laid their artful snares-- Those photographing men. They dragged me to a room of glass Beneath a blazing sun, I thought I should have died. Alas! I’m nearly fourteen stone!

They saw their victim pant and blow, They heard him cry, “I melt!” But ne’er a one for all my woe One grain of pity felt. They seized my head and screwed it round, And fixed it in a vice, And simpered when they had me bound, “That pose is very nice!

“Look up--look up, and wear a smile; Look pleasant, if you please. You must keep still a little while; Just straighten up your knees.” ’Tis thus they jeer and jibe at me As, faint and hot, I try An inch before my nose to see With sunstroke in my eye.

I think of all the bitter wrongs My later life has known; I writhe beneath Fate’s cruel thongs, I knit my brow and groan. And still with many a smile and smirk The artist trips about, And gives my chin a little jerk And sticks my elbows out.

Ye gods, am I a grinning ape To pose and posture thus? Am I a man in human shape Or turkey that they truss?

My head is free; with fiendish mirth I raise a vengeful hand, And dash the camera to earth, And fell the iron stand.

I take the artist by the throat And pin him to the wall, And jerk his chin and tear his coat, And hold his head in thrall. I bid the trembling victim smile, I cry, “Be gay and laugh, And in the very latest style I’ll take your photograph!”

I twisted till I broke his neck, I baked him in the sun; I left the room an awful wreck, And then the deed was done. They held an inquest on the bits; Ye photographing crew, Before to you the writer sits Just read that inquest through.

In Gay Japan.

BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.

Mr. Lawson, if you please, Just a little line to say I’m a-taking of my ease In a Japaneasy way.

Here I write “By Lands and Seas” For your “London Day by Day,” ’Neath the blossom-laden trees Of Japan, the glad and gay.

Here I watch the pretty shes As they don their night array; And they ask me to their teas, And they sing to me and play.

’Tis ’mid pleasures such as these That I hope you’ll let me stay-- ’Tis a climate that agrees With your faithful Edwin A.

Now no more I have to seize Editorial pen to flay Home Rule freaks of Mr. G.’s Or to keep the Rads at bay.

Mona’s “Marriage,” Lubbock’s bees, Mr. Stanley, Tottie Fay, Water rates, and School Board fees On my mind no longer prey.

Glad Japan my spirit frees From its tenement of clay, And, my note-book on my knees, With the muses I can stray.

So, dear Lawson, if you please, I will stop here if I may, Sending “Over Lands and Seas” From Japan, the glad and gay.

The Balaclava Heroes.