Globe Trotting Nelly Bly
(Joe Hart ca 1880)

I have here in my hand a lengthy cablegram,
That came from far across the sea;
It's from Miss Nelly Bly, and its contents I will try
To tell if you will listen unto me.
She's trying very hard to beat the world's record
To round the world in seventy-five days,
Of the many funny sights in her cablegram she writes
Of the people and their very curious ways.
With an umbrella and a grip she gave her friends the slip
Far across the deep blue sea,
It was a pleasant trip for her grip was not "La Grippe"
Consequently she was happy as could be.

When she landed in Cork, to Killarney took a walk,
And kissed the blarney stone with her sweet lips;
She told funny tales to the Prince of Wales,
And left him laughing almost in a fit.
She did the Gaiety dance and set Paris in a trance,
Sang "Little Annie Rooney" to Jules Verne;
She would have spoken French and Greek, if she could have stayed a week,
But she knew fond hearts for her at home did yearn.
She cheered up all the crew
With a little song or two,
At sea she ate three times a day,
From the bottom of the sea,
Up came McGinty,
To wish her luck upon her way.

When she landed in Hong Kong, she rang the dinner gong,
And they thought her quite a curiosity.
To see our Nelly hustle, and she did not wear a bustle,
A sight which even here we rarely see.
When she reached Yokohama she met a Jersey farmer,
And together they sipped too-long boo-long tea;
She was courted by a Jap; sat in the old King's lap,
And he wanted her to marry him, you see.
But when the Oceanic sailed,
How that poor fellow wailed,
Now she's on the ocean blue,
She's a box of chewing tu-lu
For each one in Honolu;
I wish she'd bring some back to me and you.

Note: Nellie Bly was a newpaperperson who impressed (and shocked) the
Victorian
world by her field reporting from prisons, poor sections of various cities
and (as celebrated here) around the world. From the song, one suspects that
the author wasn't quite sure how to take her. No relation to Stephen
Foster's Nelly Bly, who preceded this one by about 30 years. RG
RG