How Beauty Contrived To Get Square With The Beast

Miss Guinevere Platt     Was so beautiful that     She couldn't remember the day     When one of her swains     Hadn't taken the pains     To send her a mammoth bouquet.     And the postman had found,     On the whole of his round,     That no one received such a lot     Of bulky epistles     As, waiting his whistles,     The beautiful Guinevere got!     A significant sign     That her charm was divine     Was seen in society, when     The chaperons sniffed     With their eyebrows alift:     "Whatever's got into the men?"     There was always a man     Who was holding her fan,     And twenty that danced in details,     And a couple of mourners,     Who brooded in corners,     And gnawed their mustaches and nails.     John Jeremy Platt     Wouldn't stay in the flat,     For his beautiful daughter he missed:     When he'd taken his tub,     He would hie to his club,     And dally with poker or whist.     At the end of a year     It was perfectly clear     That he'd never computed the cost,     For he hadn't a penny     To settle the many     Ten thousands of dollars he'd lost!     F. Ferdinand Fife     Was a student of life:     He was coarse, and excessively fat,     With a beard like a goat's,     But he held all the notes     Of ruined John Jeremy Platt!     With an adamant smile     That was brimming with guile,     He said: "I am took with the face     Of your beautiful daughter,     And wed me she ought ter,     To save you from utter disgrace!"     Miss Guinevere Platt     Didn't hesitate at     Her duty's imperative call.     When they looked at the bride     All the chaperons cried:     "She isn't so bad, after all!"     Of the desolate men     There were something like ten     Who took up political lives,     And the flower of the flock     Went and fell off a dock,     And the rest married hideous wives!     But the beautiful wife     Of F. Ferdinand Fife     Was the wildest that ever was known:     She'd grumble and glare,     Till the man didn't dare     To say that his soul was his own.     She sneered at his ills,     And quadrupled his bills,     And spent nearly twice what he earned;     Her husband deserted,     And frivoled, and flirted,     Till Ferdinand's reason was turned.     He repented too late,     And his terrible fate     Upon him so heavily sat,     That he swore at the day     When he sat down to play     At cards with John Jeremy Platt.     He was dead in a year,     And the fair Guinevere     In society sparkled again,     While the chaperons fluttered     Their fans, as they muttered:     "She's getting exceedingly plain!"     The Moral: Predicaments often are found     That beautiful duty is apt to get round:     But greedy extortioners better beware     For dutiful beauty is apt to get square!