A Merry Jest of a Modern Maid

Miss Pallas Eudora Van Blurky,
She didn’t know chicken from turkey;
High-Spanish and Greek she could fluently speak,
But her knowledge of poultry was murky!

She could tell the great-uncle of Moses,
And the dates of the Wars of the Roses,
And the reasons of things—why the Indians wore rings
In their red aboriginal noses;

Why Shakspere was wrong in his grammar,
And the meaning of Emerson’s BRAHMA,
And she went chipping rocks with a little black box
And a small geological hammer.

She had views upon co-education,
And the principal needs of the nation,
And her glasses were blue, and the number she knew
Of the stars in each bright constellation.

And she wrote with a handwriting clerky,
And she talked with an emphasis jerky,
And she painted on tiles in the sweetest of styles,
But she didn’t know chicken from turkey!