How this “Mike” was Sykes’ father, And the father himself betwixt A duke and an earl――or rather, When the parentage got mixed. And so on and yet so forth, Will this “poet” meander on, Till he proves my Lord of Beauforth, Was undoubtedly Mike’s son. And the child was Sykes’s daughter, And the mother wife to he, Though their grandma wasn’t sorter, Everything that she might be. Yet the moral indicated, In this tale that is bedeckt, Troubles not this addle-pated, Jerry-plotting architect. Should occasion demand a sonnet, On a “starve” or on a “freeze,” Then our ballad monger is “on it,” With his dismal, doleful, wheeze, And he’s safe upon this track, sir, To his muse he ne’er resorts, For his scenes are based on facts, sir, Solid facts from police reports. Oh, the unction of this whiner, Of a tune pitched in a key, Which the clef is B flat minor, And as dirge-like as can be. Not content with dying father, Teething babe and wasting wife, With his licensed poetic lather, He must needs call in the knife. Need I wade through scenes of torture, To the climax strong and hot, When the son, himself a “scorcher,” Takes and massacres the lot. No! I needn’t, for it’s certain. That in sympathy you’d choke, With emotion at the burden, Of this ballad-slinging bloke. HEBER K. DANIELS. From _The South Western Star_. ―――― _Truth_ for October 14th, 1886, contained half-a-dozen ballads written in the style of Mr. Sims’s poems. The three following may be quoted as interesting imitations, but it will be seen that they do not parody any particular poem:―― LITTLE FLO.’ Tell you the tale o’ Flo, sir, and how she came to die? ’Twere a sad time in my life, tho’ it’s so long gone by. I was a drunken brute then――never thought much o’ Flo; Nearly al’ays in liquor――got jolly screwed, you know. Yes, I treated her shockin’! life must ha’ been pretty bad, She’d prom’sed her dyin’ mother al’ays to look after dad. I used to laugh at her notions, she was but a gal o’ seven, And ’ad got it fixed in her ’ead to bring me along to heaven. “Dad!” she’d say to me sometimes, “it’s beau’ful bright in there; Everyone’s al’ays ’appy, and got golden crowns to wear.” How I laughed at the child then, to think o’ a crown on my head; I told her to shut up cantin’, I didn’t want to be dead. Still some’ow I wasn’t ’appy, for ’appen I’d got a fright, And wondered whatever’ud’appen if I should die that night, So to keep down her pleadin’s I off on a pretty good spree, Down at the pub at the corner, along o’ my mates and me.