Read "A Merry Jest of a Modern Maid" by Helen Gray Cone online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
PUCK
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!