John George Brown, American
Nellie, About To Find Out If She’s Made Weight For This Year’s Quilting Bee, 1883
Oil on canvas
Follow That Is Priceless on Social Media and GoComics (the Link button):
Click to Follow This Blog or Share This Masterpiece:
Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (archived if necessary), here, here, here (if book page doesn’t show, click Search inside), here (archived if necessary), here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here (archived if necessary), here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page.
/// All who work at the Mill must be weighed
for their new anti-stealing crusade.
If she weighs a lot more
when she walks out the door
than she did walking in, she’s been “made.”
/// His scale’s much higher number asserts
that she’s smuggling things under her skirts.
So she quickly expounds,
“How’d I gain all those pounds?
While at lunch I ate many desserts.”
/// Caleb doesn’t believe her excuse;
it appears there’s a thief on the loose.
Bonnie’d never have risked
being strip searched or frisked.
Any man who tried that she’d seduce.
/// Ah… but Caleb’s not easily swayed.
he prefers his gals “sturdily made.”
Bonnie looks far too thin
to get under his skin,
(unlike heftier women he’s weighed).
/// To the Mill owner’s grateful relief,
Caleb’s scale had uncovered a thief.
When Bonnie’d been stripped off
he found that she’d ripped off
so much stuff, it would beggar belief.
/// Every day the Mill owner would hail
Caleb, who had put Bonnie in jail.
Caleb said, “No more praise.
What I need is a raise.
I am tired of working for scale.”
/// “I’m afraid that I cannot condone
your announcing I weigh thirteen stone!
Look at all of these flounces—
each weighs over twelve ounces.
My steel corset weighs nine pounds alone!”
/// She insists that her weight’s mostly dress,
and she’d weigh, were she naked, far less.
“Ninety-eight pounds, I’d bet
is my weight, soaking wet.”
Guy says, “Prove it, I won’t write your guess.”