Game of Fives E-book

                                      1883
                                A GAME OF FIVES

                                by Lewis Carroll









Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)



                           A GAME OF FIVES
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    FIVE little girls of Five, Four, Three, Two, One:
    Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun.
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    Five rosy girls, in years from Ten to Six:
    Sitting down to lessons- no more time for tricks.
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    Five growing girls, from Fifteen to Eleven:
    Music, Drawing, Languages, and food enough for seven!
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    Five winsome girls, from Twenty to Sixteen:
    Each young man that calls, I say "Now tell me which you mean!"
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    Five dashing girls, the youngest Twenty-one:
    But, if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?
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    Five showy girls- but Thirty is an age
    When girls may be engaging, but they somehow don't engage.
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    Five dressy girls, of Thirty-one or more:
    So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before!
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               *       *       *       *       *       *
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    Five Passe girls- Their age? Well, never mind!
    We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
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    But the quondam "careless bachelor" begins to think he knows
    The answer to that ancient problem "how the money goes"!
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                             THE END