Old Loves And Old Dreams,-- "Requiescant In Pace." How Strange Now It Seems,-- "Old" Loves And "Old" Dreams! Yet We Once Wrote You Reams Maude, Alice, And Gracie! Old Loves And Old Dreams,-- "Requiescant In Pace." When I Called At The "Hollies" To-Day, In The Room With The Cedar-Wood Presses, Aunt Deb. Was Just Folding Away What She Calls Her "Memorial Dresses." She'd The Frock That She Wore At Fifteen,-- Short-Waisted, Of Course--My Abhorrence; She'd "The Loveliest"--Something In "Een" That She Wears In Her Portrait By Lawrence; She'd The "Jelick" She Used--"As A Greek," (!) She'd The Habit She Got Her Bad Fall In; She Had E'En The Blue Moir' Antique That She Opened Squire Grasshopper'S Ball In:-- New And Old They Were All Of Them There:-- Sleek Velvet And Bombazine Stately,-- She Had Hung Them Each Over A Chair To The "Paniers" SHe's Taken To Lately (Which She Showed Me, I Think, By Mistake). And I Conned O'Er The Forms And The Fashions, Till The Faded Old Shapes Seemed To Wake All The Ghosts Of My Passed-Away "Passions;"-- From The Days Of Love'S Youthfullest Dream, When The Height Of My Shooting Idea Was To Burn, Like A Young Polypheme, For A Somewhat Mature Galatea. There Was Lucy, Who "Tiffed" With Her First, And Who Threw Me As Soon As Her Third Came; There Was Norah, Whose Cut Was The Worst, For She Told Me To Wait Till My "Berd" Came; Pale Blanche, Who Subsisted On Salts; Blonde Bertha, Who Doted On Schiller; Poor Amy, Who Taught Me To Waltz; Plain Ann, That I Wooed For The "Siller;"-- All Danced Round My Head In A Ring, Like "The Zephyrs" That Somebody Painted, All Shapes Of The Feminine Thing-- Shy, Scornful, Seductive, And Sainted,-- To My Wife, In The Days She Was Young.... "How, Sir," Says That Lady, Disgusted, "Do You Dare To Include Me Among Your Loves That Have Faded And Rusted?" "Not At All!"--I Benignly Retort. (I Was Just The Least Bit In A Temper!) "Those, Alas! Were The Fugitive Sort, But You Are My--Eadem Semper!" Full Stop,--And A Sermon. Yet Think,-- There Was Surely Good Ground For A Quarrel,-- She Had Checked Me When Just On The Brink Of--I Feel--A Remarkable Moral.