Here is the tale—and you must make the most of it!
Here is the rhyme—ah, listen and attend!
Backwards—forwards—read it all and boast of it
If you are anything the wiser at the end!

Now Jack looked up—it was time to sup, and the bucket was yet to
fill,
And Jack looked round for a space and frowned, then beckoned his
sister Jill,
And twice he pulled his sister's hair, and thrice he smote her side;
"Ha' done, ha' done with your impudent fun—ha' done with your
games!" she cried;
"You have made mud-pies of a marvellous size—finger and face are
black,
You have trodden the Way of the Mire and Clay—now up and wash you,
Jack!
Or else, or ever we reach our home, there waiteth an angry dame—
Well you know the weight of her blow—the supperless open shame!
Wash, if you will, on yonder hill—wash, if you will, at the spring,—
Or keep your dirt, to your certain hurt, and an imminent walloping!"

"You must wash—you must scrub—you must scrape!" growled Jack,
"you must traffic with cans and pails,
Nor keep the spoil of the good brown soil in the rim of your
finger-nails!
The morning path you must tread to your bath—you must wash ere
the night descends,
And all for the cause of conventional laws and the soapmakers'
dividends!
But if 'tis sooth that our meal in truth depends on our washing,
Jill,
By the sacred right of our appetite—haste—haste to the top of
the hill!"

They have trodden the Way of the Mire and Clay, they have toiled
and travelled far,
They have climbed to the brow of the hill-top now, where the
bubbling fountains are,
They have taken the bucket and filled it up—yea, filled it up to
the brim;
But Jack he sneered at his sister Jill, and Jill she jeered at him:
"What, blown already!" Jack cried out (and his was a biting mirth!)
"You boast indeed of your wonderful speed—but what is the
boasting worth?
Now, if you can run as the antelope runs, and if you can turn like
a hare,
Come, race me, Jill, to the foot of the hill—and prove your
boasting fair!"

"Race? What is a race" (and a mocking face had Jill as she spake
the word)
"Unless for a prize the runner tries? The truth indeed ye heard,
For I can run as the antelope runs, and I can turn like a hare:—
The first one down wins half-a-crown—and I will race you there!"
"Yea, if for the lesson that you will learn (the lesson of humbled
pride)
The price you fix at two-and-six, it shall not be denied;
Come, take your stand at my right hand, for here is the mark we toe:
Now, are you ready, and are you steady? Gird up your petticoats! Go!"

And Jill she ran like a winging bolt, a bolt from the bow released,
But Jack like a stream of the lightning gleam, with its pathway
duly greased;
He ran down hill in front of Jill like a summer-lightning flash—
Till he suddenly tripped on a stone, or slipped, and fell to the
earth with a crash.
Then straight did rise on his wondering eyes the constellations
fair,
Arcturus and the Pleiades, the Greater and Lesser Bear,
The swirling rain of a comet's train he saw, as he swiftly fell—
And Jill came tumbling after him with a loud triumphant yell:
"You have won, you have won, the race is done! And as for the
wager laid—
You have fallen down with a broken crown—the half-crown debt is
paid!"

They have taken Jack to the room at the back where the family
medicines are,
And he lies in bed with a broken head in a halo of vinegar;
While, in that Jill had laughed her fill as her brother fell to
earth,
She had felt the sting of a walloping—she hath paid the price of
her mirth!

Here is the tale—and now you have the whole of it,
Here is the story—well and wisely planned,
Beauty—Duty—these make up the soul of it—
But, ah, my little readers, will you mark and understand?

Anthony C. Deane.