Page:Songs of a Savoyard.djvu/66

62 If you wish to succeed as a jester, you'll need
 * To consider each person's auricular:

What is all right for B would quite scandalize C
 * (For C is so very particular);

And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull
 * Is as empty of brains as a ladle;

While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp,
 * That he's known your best joke from his cradle!
 * When your humour they flout,
 * You can't let yourself go;
 * And it does put you out
 * When a person says, "Oh!
 * I have known that old joke from my cradle!"

If your master is surly, from getting up early
 * (And tempers are short in the morning),

An inopportune joke is enough to provoke
 * Him to give you, at once, a month's warning.

Then if you refrain, he is at you again,
 * For he likes to get value for money.

He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare,
 * "If you know that you're paid to be funny?"
 * It adds to the task
 * Of a merryman's place,
 * When your principal asks,
 * With a scowl on his face,
 * If you know that you're paid to be funny?

Comes a Bishop, maybe, or a solemn D.D.—
 * Oh, beware of his anger provoking!

Better not pull his hair—don't stick pins in his chair;
 * He don't understand practical joking.