Still effective in our time, it raised a giggle
In a patient friend when I tickled his ear
With this feather duster from the past.
Back in its inceptive days
It probably raised some eyebrows, too,
With subtext racy enough to tweak
And titillate corseted manatees.
So short and sweet—just four lines long:
A set-up, pitch, and swift release;
Few modern anecdotes can match
Its elegant humoristic arc.
A girl named Quick related it
To Twain not long before he died;
She was one of his "angelfish,"
Exempt from corruption and correction,
One of his Susy-surrogates
That staved off sorrow not often exposed,
For grief ever tore at the old man's heart.
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