Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3811/Diplomacy
(Yawning, though rude, is, according to the doctors, an extremely healthy exercise.)
I have a friend who wrote a book And begged me to peruse it, And bluntly state the view I took— Encourage or abuse it. I want, he said, the truth alone, But said it in a hopeful tone.
Perceiving there was no escape, With Chapter I. I led off; Page 2 provoked my earliest gape, At 3 I yawned my head off, At 4 I cast the thing away Unto some dim and distant day.
For weeks I racked my harassed brain For something kind and ruthful, To spare his feelings and remain Comparatively truthful (I'm very often troubled by My inability to lie).
"Dear Charles," I wrote him in the end, "I fear no contradiction When I declare that you have penned A healthy woik of fiction. I am, I candidly admit, A sounder man through reading it."