There was a Fish lived in a pool
Who didn’t like to go to school
And hooky he’d play
Every sunshiny day
And that’s why they called him a fool.

Said the Cow with the crumpled horn
To the dairy Maid early one morn:
“Did you notice my switch?”
Then she game it a hitch
And the Maid wished she’d never been born.

When the Squirrel met a Magpie
In the top of a tree very high
They started to fight
To claw and to bite
And you should have seen the “fur fly.”

A heathen named Min, passing by
A pie-shop, picked up a mince-pie.
If you think Min a thief,
Pray dismiss the belief:
The mince-pie that Min spied was Min’s pie.

[Oliver Herford in The Century Magazine. Vol. LXXXVI, August 1913, no. 4, p. 640.]

Said the spider, in tones of distress:
“As a spinster I’m not a success.
Though I toil and I spin
And I work myself thin,
I never can have a new dress.”

[Oliver Herford in The Century Magazine. Vol. LXXXVI, August 1913, no. 4, p. 639.]

A camel, with practical views
On the nutritive value of shoes,
To the mosque would repair
While the folks were at prayer,
Little dreaming their soles they would lose.

[Oliver Herford in The Century Magazine. Vol. LXXXVI, July 1913, no. 3, p. 480.]

“How absurd,” said the gnat to the gnu,
“To spell your queer name as you do!”
“For the matter of that,”
Said the gnu to the gnat,
“That’s just as I feel about you.”

[Oliver Herford in The Century Magazine. Vol. LXXXVI, July 1913, no. 3, p. 479.]

There once was a kind armadillo,
Who solaced a lone weeping-willow.
Said he: “Do not weep!
What you need is some sleep;
Pray rest on my shell as a pillow.”

[Oliver Herford in The Century Magazine. Vol. LXXXVI, June 1913, no. 2, p. 320.]

Once a pound-keeper chanced to impound
An ounce that was straying around.
The pound-keeper straight
Was fined for false weight,
Since he’d only one ounce in his pound.

[Oliver Herford in The Century Magazine. Vol. LXXXVI, May 1913, no. 1, p. 158.]