MADAME LA GRIPPE
And the doctor alone, who is sure of his tip,
Stood firm in the presence of Madame La Grippe!
Zigzagging along the Baltic’s bleak strand,
It crossed the grim channel to sturdy England.
The eloquent Gladstone lost power of speech
And Salisbury took to his bed with a screech.
The Queen drank hot toddy of fine Irish make,
And dreamed that Parnell was attending her wake
With a dark, scowling visage and sinister lip,
Disguised in the raiment of Madame La Grippe!
Astride of the cable, by British emprise,
It shot to the land of the free and the wise.
The Bostonese stomach disdained pork and beans,
And lived on a diet of antipyrines.
New York heard the figure of Liberty whoop
Like a child in the robust embrace of the croup.
Mr. Chauncey Depew wrote funeral verse
While the Negro Problem passed by in a hearse.
The scissors were dropped from Coupon’s keen clip
As Wall Street went mad in the waltz of La Grippe!
On the wings of a blizzard, it flew to the West,
With a wild and a woolly rheumatic behest.
Chicago surrendered at once the World’s Fair
And took a first prize in the Prince of the Air.
[ 125 ]
