The Wit of Women

Then he waved his hand to Wiseman and resigned to him the floor;

Only this and nothing more.

Quick and nervous, short and wiry, with a look profound, yet fiery,

Mr. Wiseman now stepped forward and eyed us darkly o’er,

Then an arm-chair, quaint and olden, gay with colors green and golden,

By the pretty hostess rolled in from its place behind the door,

Was offered to the reader, in the centre of the floor,

And he took the chair be sure.

Then with arguments elastic, and a voice and eye sarcastic,

Mr. Wiseman into flinders the Holy Bible tore;

And he proved beyond all question that the God of Moses’ mention

Was a fraudulent invention of some Hebrews, three or four,

And the Son of God’s ascension an imaginary soar!

Only this and nothing more.

Each member then admitted that his part was well acquitted,

For his strong, impassioned reasoning had touched them to the core;

He felt sure, as he surveyed them through his specs, that

he had “played” them,

And was proud that he had made them all astonished by his lore;

Not a continental cared he for the fruits such lessons bore,

So he bowed and left the floor.

Then a Colonel, cold and smiling, with a stately air beguiling,

Who punctuates his paragraphs on Newport’s sounding shore,

Said his friend was wise and witty, and yet it seemed a pity

To destroy in this old city the belief it had before

In the ancient superstitions of the days of yore.

This he said, and something more.

Orthodoxy, he lamented, thought the Christian world demented,

Yet still he felt a rev’rence as he read the Bible o’er,

And he thought the modern preacher, though a poor stick for a teacher,

Or a broken reed, like Beecher, ought to have his claims looked o’er,

And the “tyranny of science” was indeed, he felt quite sure,

Our danger more and more.

His remarks our pulses quicken, when a British Lion, stricken

With his wondrous self-importance—he knew everything and more—

Said he loathed such moderation; and he made his declaration

That, in spite of all creation, he found no God to adore;

And his voice was like the ocean as its surges loudly roar;

Only this and nothing more.

But the interest now grew lukewarm, for an ancient Concord book- worm

With authoritative tramping, forward came and took the floor,

And in Orphic mysticisms talked of life and light and prisms,

And the Infinite baptisms on a transcendental shore,

And the concrete metaphysic, till we yawned in anguish sore;

But still he kept the floor.

Then uprose a kindred spirit almost ready to inherit

The rare and radiant Aiden that he begged us to adore;

His smile was beaming brightly, and his soft hair floated whitely

Round a face as fair and sightly as a pious priest’s of yore;

And we forgave the arguments worn out years before,

For we loved this saintly bore.

Then a lively little charmer, noted as a dress reformer,

Because that mystic garment, chemiloon, she wore,

Said she had no “views” of Jesus, and therefore would not tease us,