Poetry

[From the Bridgnorth, Shifnal and Albrighton Argus, with which is incorporated the Wheat Growers' Intelligencer and STock Breeders' Gazeteer]

It isn't often, goodness knows, that we are urged to quit the prose with which we earn our daily bread and take to poetry instead. But great events come now and then which call for the poetic pen. SO you will pardon us, we know, if, dealing with the Shropshire Show, we lisp in numbers to explain that Emp. of Blandings won again.
This year her chance at first appeared a slender one, for it was feared that she, alas, had had her day. On every side you heard folks say 'She's won it twice. She can't repeat. 'Twould be a super-porcine feat.' 'Twas freely whispered up and down that Fate would place the laurel crown this time on the capacious bean of Matchingham's up-and-coming Queen. For though the Emp. is fat, the latter, they felt, would prove distinctly fatter. 'Her too, too solid flesh,' they said, ' 'll be sure to cop that silver medal.'
Such was the story which one heard, but nothing of the sort occurred, and, as in both the previous years, a hurricane of rousing cheers from the nobility and gentry acclaimed the Blandings Castle entry as all the judges - Colonel Brice, Sir Henry Boole and Major Price (three minds with but a single thought whose verdict none can set at naught) - announced the Fat Pigs champ to be Lord Emsworth's portly nominee.
With reference to her success, she gave a statement to the Press. 'Although,' she said, 'one hates to brag, I knew the thing was in the bag. Though i admit the Queen is stout, the issue never was in doubt. Clean living did the trick,' said she. 'To that i owe my victory.'
Ah, what a lesson does it teach to all of us, that splendid speech!