The Day of Small Things

1895

No novels now, but novelettes,
Cigars give place to cigarettes,
Titanic "suns" to twinkling "stars,"
Pictures to sketches, "pomes" to "pars,"
Bonnets to things like housemaids' caps,
Banquets to tidbits, books to scraps,
And three volume novels to "short stories,"
Gibbon-like length and epic glories,
Like mammoths and cave bears, are gone,
Earth brings not back the mastodon.
The microbe takes its place. They kill us
Not by a giant, but bacillus.
Monsters, huge dragons, Laidly worms,
We fear no more. 'Tis unseen "germs"
That floor us in our life's full pride.
We want a "Jack the Germicide,"
And not the giant killer, now.
Behemoth and the big bowwow
Are gone, for aught not smart and little
We do not care one jot or tittle.

—Punch.