CHICAGO MAY
She went to a Levantine Jew.
Her bright piastres hire
His sordid service; to her stew
Behold the wretch retire!
A monster, after four or five
Months, came ; aborted, but alive.
‘The eunuch of a childless Turk
‘Was bribed by the head wife—
Oh, substituted wage for work I—
To buy a baby life.
‘The best the mean slave could procure
‘Was this—thrown out on some manure.
He took it to the harem, told
The tale; it wheezed the sot
Whose palsied eyes with rapture rolled
At hearing he had got
In his old age (his youth was wild )
A real live beautiful male child.
‘This blinking bastard lived to
be
A thief, a renegade,
‘To cheat at cards, to fight and flee
A volunteer brigade
Of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews
With all to loot, and naught to lose.
He failed to ogle men, but learnt
‘The art of bilking whores :—
‘The Turks, who should have had him burnt,
But threw him out of doors.
19