Some Excuses for a Smile

Lives of great men all remind us,
Life is really not worthwhile,
Unless we all can leave behind us,
Some excuses for a smile.

These women don't look too amused, but someone with a sense of humor must have added the poem to this real photo postcard.

These four lines of rhyme appeared in 1905 in The Silly Syclopedia, a book by "Noah Lott" (an entertaining pseudonym for the writer George V. Hobart). The poem turns out to be a parody of the following stanza from "A Psalm of Life," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.