The Source of News From The Needle
ABSOLUTE knowledge I have none,
But my aunt’s washerwoman’s son
Heard a policeman on his beat
Say to a laborer in the street
That he had a letter just last week,
Written in the finest Greek,
From a Chinese coolie in Timbuctoo,
Who said the niggers in Cuba knew
Of a colored man in a Texas town
Who got it straight from a circus clown,
That a man in Klondike heard the news
From a gang of South American Jews,
About somebody in Bamboo
Who heard a man who claimed he knew
Of a swell society female rake
Whose mother-in-law will undertake
To prove that her husband’s sister’s niece
Has stated in a printed piece
That she has a son who has a friend
Who knows when the war is going to end.