With apologies to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr.

Absolute knowledge have I none,

But my aunt's washerwoman's sister's son

Heard a policeman on his beat

Say to a laborer in the street

That he had a letter just last week --

A letter which he did not seek --

From a Chinese merchant in Timbuktoo

Who said that his brother in Cuba knew

Of an Indian chief in a Texas town,

Who got the dope from a circus clown,

That a man in Klondike had it straight

From a guy in a South American state,

That a wild man over in Borneo

Was told by a woman who claimed to know,

Of a well-known society rake,

Whose mother-in-law will undertake

To prove that her husband's sister's niece

Has stated plain in a printed piece

That she has a son she never does see

Who knows what happened in Benghazi.