Maud Mailer’s Bike

Maud Mailer’s Bike.
336.2

Maud Muller on a summer’s day
Maunted her wheel and rode away.
Beneath her blue cap glowed a wealth
Of large red treckles and rat rate health.

Ringing, she rode, and her merry glen
Frightened a sparrow from his free:
But when she was several miles from town,
Upon a hillslope, cousting down,
The swent wong died, and a vague unrest
And a sort of terror alled her breast:
A fear that the hardly dared to own.
For what if her wheel should strike a stone?

The judge scorched swiftly down the road:
Just then he heard his tire explode!
He carried his wheel into the shade
Of an apple tree to await the maid,
And asked her if she would kindly loan
Her pump to him, as he’d lost his own.
She left her wheel with a sprightly jump.
And in less than a Jiffy produced her pump:
And she blushed as she gave it, looking down
At her feet, once hid by a trailing gown.

Then said the judge, as he pumped away,
Tis very fine weather we’re having today.”
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of twenty mile runs, and centuries.

And Maud forgot that no trailing gown
Was over her bloomers hanging down;
But the tire was fixed, a-lack-a-day!
The Judge remounted and orde away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed, “Ah, mel
That I the Judge’a bride might bel
My father should have a brand new wheel
Of the costliest make and the finest steel,
And I’d give one to ma, of the same design,
So she’d cease to borrow mine.”

The judge looked back as he elimbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still.
A prettier face and form more fair I’ve seldom gazed ut, I declare!
Would she were mine, and I today
Could make her put those bloomers away.”

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold.
And he shuddered to think how they would scold
If he should, one of these afternoone.
Come home with a bride in pantaloons!

He married a wife of richest dower,
Who had never succumbed to the bloomers’ power:
Yet oft while watching the smoke wreathes curl
He thought of that freckled bloomer giri;
Of the way she stood there, pigeon-toed,
While he was pumping beside the road.

She married a man who clerked in a store,
And many children played round her door.
And then her bloomers brought her joyー
She cut them down for her oldest boy.
But still of the judge she often thought,
And sighed over the loss that her bloomers wrought
Or wondered if wearing them was a ain.
And then confessed: “It might have been.”

Alas for the judge! Alas for the mald!
Dreams were their only stock in trade,
For of all wise words of tongue or pen
The wisest are these: “Leave pants for men.”

Ah, well! For us all hope still remains,
For the bloomer girl and the man of brains,
And in the hereafter bloomers may
Be not allowed to block the way.