While The Billy BoilsSearchDon Juan lay dying, as Don Juans do,At the end of their tickle-toe tether;In life he’d indulged in all species of wooIn all sorts of seasons and weather.He had frolicked and flirted from Paris to Perth,He’d mashed ’em from Melbourne to Gympie,He’d philandered with females of generous girth,The scrumptious, the stout and the skimpy;But ere his poor soul Peter’s portico stormed,Lying back on his dying-bed pillows,Unto the wife of his bosom reformedHe confessed all his pink piccadilloes!
He told as his optics grew glassy in deathOf how he’d gone mashing with Mary,And wheezed in a palpitant, penitent breathOf many a feminine fairy.Stern-visaged his wife listened unto his listOf jinks and joy-ridings with Jessie,Of dances with Daphne, or Katie he’d kissed,And beanoes he’d been to with Bessie.He shuddered his spouse with his tales of deceitWhich the average wife merely guesses,While she with a pencil and copy-pad sheetWrote the various names and addresses!
He told her how Trixie had led him astray,And how Dorothy ducked on his dollars;Of Lily the larky and Gertie the gayAnd the fun that a flirtation follows.Her soul grew as sour as the grapes that are green,Her fingers were itching to scratch ‘emAs he spoke of the benders on which he had beenWith clyners wherever he’d catch ’em.She counted the minutes he’d hang on to lifeAnd fumed at the Flossies and Fuzzies,For a wild cat at bay isn’t worse than a wifeSupplanted by impudent hussies!
She wrote them all down with a forcible fist(Trust a woman for rapping her rival),And checked and corrected his love-making listWith marginal marks adjectival.In capital letters he printed each name,Ditto streets where the hussies resided,And when he attested his record of shameHis hand by her fingers was guided.The coffin and crepe then she ordered aheadBefitting his place and profession,And as soon as they’d shovelled him into his bedShe would publish the Corpse’s Confession!
Next day when the doctor on Don Juan calledHe noticed decided improvement —No longer his pulse his physician appalledAnd his heart had a healthier movement.His temp’rature fell with a five degree thud,His cough was no longer distressing,And though not quite out of the medical mudHe was soon what you’d call convalescing.But at last when he found he’d a new lease of life,As they bath-chaired him out in his own yard.He recalled with a shudder his words to his wifeWhen he thought he was bound for the boneyard!
“You’ve not played the game,” said the doctor when heHad told him of what he’d confessed to“There’ll be tragedies here, and, take it from me,You’ll stand a good chance to go West, too.Your secrets you should have kept deep in your soul —See the barneys you’ve bought from their brothers.I class any person as clean up the poleWho yaps to his wife about others.”“Ah,” said the patient, “tact’s one of my games,A man should be cute who confesses,So I took the precaution to give her wrong names,And I didn’t give dinkum addresses!”