FROM LIFE.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 149, 20 December 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

FROM LIFE.

'Tis a first-night performance, the playei^ And people are all at their best; Proud fashion is here in her splendour And folly is gorgeously dressed. And I, with" the gods of the gallery, Have managed this evening to shirk A few hours of dull extra labour That fall to a Government clerk. There's a box way down there in tha distance, Mid music and flowers and lace, And in it beyond all resistance I find myself watching the face Of Nellie/ the daughter of Gober, Who made sixty millions by work Not so clean in the eyes of a sober And penniless Government clerk. But now, Nellie ranks with the Tiighest, There's a diplomat grand on her right,, On her left there's a gorgeous tin soldier,, Whose name, only, got in the fight — A soldier like those little Nellie And I used to play at ere Burke Had looked up her pedigree noble, To frighten a Government clerk. Ah! Nellie, pray whom will you marry In all of this gorgeous array? Mr. Sing Loo, of China? a Russian? A Pole, or a Monsieur Fraucais, A Greek? an Italian? Korean? Perhaps an unspeakable Turk? A titled though woolly Fijian, You'll prefer to a Government clerk.; Perchance you will sit in the future Upon the right hand of the lord Whom you bought with ycur glittering millions, You will live in high fashion abroad. Your dresses, your jewels, your babies, Your castles will fall to the work Of the "yellows" who know not you promised Yourself to a Government clerk. Yet, Nellie, you look in your splfndour Ah you did in your white pinafore When you swept up the yard, and your mother Washed clothes at the old cabin door. Your eyes keep thi? blue of tho mountains, Your lips hivve the saaia Ci-.iicy perk As of yore when you drank from the dipper With a poor little Government clerk. The curtain has dropped, and the people Are solemnly moving; aw.'y ; I believe 'twas a splmdid performance, Yet I was not watching tli£ play. I was thinking — "Oh. oack, you arc cruel, I lovo you, ' a \i hisper, n, jerk At my heart, Nellie's on my shoulder, Makes a king of the Government clork Annulet Andrews 4 in the Atlanta Journal