from Booklover's Magazine
Alice and the Book Worm
by Ellis Parker Butler
The Worm seated himself comfortably on the edge of the book.
"Do you like limericks?" he asked; "I don't. They remind me of limerick hooks, and they use worms to bait limerick hooks."
"I don't believe I know what they are," said Alice, doubtfully, "but they sound as if I didn't like them."
"Then I will be glad to sing a couple," said the Worm, and, crossing his eighteen feet, he sang in a low, tearful voice:
"A lady named Rose had a Daughter
Who did things no lady had ought 'er;
The good folk confessed
She was none of the best,
But I notice they all of them bought her."
"You see," he continued, "people couldn't agree about the book. It was a regular case of Ward politics. But it was different with the Pit. Every one enjoyed that. I tasted it myself and I made a limerick about it. It goes this way:
"Said Annabelle Susan De Witt,
'I fear I have fallen a bit;
For several nights
I was Up On the Heights,
But now I am deep in The Pit.'"
"Why," exclaimed Alice, "that's a pun!"
"Of course it is," said the Worm, happily. "You wouldn't think it of me, would you?" Without pausing he sang:
"A poet swore several curses,
'For empty,' he said, 'my poor purse is:
My poems, alack!
Ne'er fail to come back,
And my verses are always reverses.'"
"I don't think that is very funny," said Alice, doubtfully, for the Worm was laughing until the tears ran down his nose, which was odd, because he hadn't any nose.
"Don't you?" he asked. "Neither did the poet. He had to pay the postage every time they came back. And they always did come back, because he was a real poet. You see," he said, "there are three kinds of poets -- real poets, magazine poets, and Rudyard Kipling. The real poets write Edgar Allan Poetry; the magazine poets write magazine poetry, and Kipling writes apropoetry."
"I never heard of apropoetry," said Alice, gently, for she did not want to hurt the Worm's feelings.
"Certainly not," said the Worm, proudly. I invented the word myself. Apropoetry is the kind that is apropos. I invent a great many words. I invented the word 'to Kipple.' Its definition is 'to jump on with both feet while wearing running shoes in which there are long, sharp spikes.' And the participle is Kipling. I have used it in a little poem I wrote recently:
"When the season is dull, or the Ministers slip,
Or a sassy sensation is due,
Or the cricketing, foot-balling oafs need a jab,
We Kipple -- yes, Kipple, a few.
"Then we slap in the words in a barbaric way,
And we skewer the indolent crew
On barrack-room bayonets, done into rhyme,
And we Kipple -- yes, Kipple, a few."
When I'm a publisher I'm going to get out an edition of Lamb with mint sauce. Do you like Lamb's Tales?"
"I like ox-tails in soup," Alice said.
"I mean Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare," said the Worm, crossly. "Don't show your ignorance and interrupt me when I am getting ready to recite:
"Mary had a set of Lamb
All neatly bound in calf;
She bought it at a dry goods store --
One dollar and a half.
Little Bo Peep had a set in sheep
With a contract that did bind her
Installments to pay, but she ran away
And left her Tales behind her."
