Why Abel Got the Cane.

It probably was Adam's adamantcy which caused Cain to put the label on Abel, and if Adam's appeals had been less serpentine and more concerned with causes than cores, Abel might have dodged the cane. The naughtiness of youth is nought but a sally into the alley of allegation to see if the allegation equals the actuality. Put to metrical measure it sounds lore or mess like this:—

When we are young and life is mostly “why,”

And Heresy harps in accents drab and dry,

What remedy remains for questing youth

Except to ascertain the actual truth By individual inquest on the spot

To learn the why and wherefore and the what?

For youth demands the actualities

Of life, and knows by instinct chalk from cheese.

With mind unhampered by the direful dread

Of compromising for its daily bread, Youth can't be satisfied with self-deceit, But turns to taste the raw ungarnished meat.

And if the dish prove over-red and rare For stomachs unacquaint with fleshy fare, At least it learns while yet its mind is slim,

The reason why adults are grey and grim. And who can blame a mind not run to fat For wond'ring how its elders “got like that.”

Experience, the ancient anodyne For pristine preconception, must refine The making mind of youth, although methink

Experiment oft' makes the air to stink.

Thus when young Waldo, barely rising eight,

Is found recumbent in a sozzled state, With uncle's smouldering pipe upon his chest,

Young Waldo's state explains that he's expressed

The fundamental urge to grasp the truth About this Lady Nicotine forsooth.

And when young Waldo's senses make the grade,

He'll recognise the lady is a jade.

When Albert Edward, thinking he's a “swinjer,”

At seventeen consorts with gin and ginger,

Though this is bad we one and all agree, We can't feel any worse than Albert E. And thus these expeditions in the “wood” Do prove that out of evil cometh good, And age by word of mouth can never equal

The awful agony of sinning's sequel.