Author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Boy Fortune Hunters in the Yucatan, Daughters of Destiny, etc.
From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Act III, 1901.
A FOREST WITCH appeared in an early draft of the script for what eventually became the Broadway stage hit The Wizard of Oz. Baum wrote the following lyrics for the FOREST WITCH to sing in the Forest of Fighting Trees. The character and scene were cut from the script during work on the show in early 1902.
I’m fearfully wicked,
I’m cheerfully wicked,
I shudder myself when I think
How yearningly wicked,
Discerningly wicked
I am, from nothing I shrink.
I’m thrilling wicked,
I’m killingly wicked,
I don’t care a rap for what’s good.
I’m slashingly wicked,
Abashingly wicked,
I wouldn’t reform if I could.
You may show a deep aversion to a green goods man,
Or cast a vile aspersion on a sneak thief gang,
You may tremble at a murderer, an anarchist or tough,
But none of them compared to me is really up to snuff.
I’m blissfully wicked,
Remissfully wicked,
No crime is too dreadful for me.
I’m snortingly wicked,
Distortingly wicked,
My sinfulness fills me with glee.
THE FORGETFUL POET
By Ruth Plumly Thompson
Originally published in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 21, 1920.
Puzzle Corner
This week the Forgetful Poet would like to know why is the weather vane.
And he says further that it is only safe to stick out your tongue at one person. Who is he?
What animal do we use to clean windows?
“I wish,” said a mouse
To a sparrow one noon,
“I wish I myself
Were the man in the moon!”
Why?
There once was an amiable -----
Who ate several boxes of Borax!
Yes, that antelope et it, and my! it upset it,
And gave him a pain in his thorax!
The pie puzzles last week gave a good many folks mental indigestion, so the Forgetful Poet wants to answer them right away. First, pie is like a cross old man because it is crusty. It could never grow into a giant because it is made short with shortening. Patti was named after a small pie. An animal added to pie gives us pie-rat and pie is used in geometry and magpie is the bird.
The words left out of the verses were piebald, cap-a-pie, pioneers and mince.
[Answers next time.]
Copyright © 2017 Eric Shanower and David Maxine. All rights reserved.
