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THE LESSON

(1899—1902)

Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good
.

Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again,
Were all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilderoy's kite.
We have had a jolly good lesson, and it serves us jolly well right!


This was not bestowèd us under the trees, nor yet in the shade of a tent,

But swingingly, over eleven degrees of a bare brown continent.

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