From the comedy “Love O’ Mike”, 1916
Words by Harry B. Smith
Music by Jerome Kern
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
Lyrics
- For inebriates misguided
There’s a vehicle provided
It’s the old water cart now and then
Even gamblers will awaken
And the cards and dice be shaken
They are through boys, it’s never again
But for the poor unhappy wretch
The love germ gets
There’s not a cure that scientists can name
Girls get to be a habit worse than cigarettes
And just like cigarettes there all the same
Refrain
Girls fool us, love to rule us
In their little ways they like to school us
Have us rolling over jumping through
We do all the billing while they coo
You swear off but you pair off
With the first fair face, my son
When you declare
That you won’t fall in love again
Chance comes along with a brand new one
And you fall strong, boys, it’s all wrong
What’s the use, it can’t be done
- For most any foolish habit
There’s a cure if you will grab it
But when one has a temperament warm
There’s no remedy corrective
And no treatment is effective
Although some recommend chloroform
The seeker of the soulmate if he’s built that way
Is given up by science from the start
He’s bound to have from boyhood till he’s old and gray
Congenital enlargement of the heart
Refrain
Girls take him, make him, break him
And at any time they’re apt to shake him
Round with six police men he should go
He is but a chronic Romeo
Like Sinbad he is in bad
He’s Misfortunes favorite son
Girls throw him down
But he’s right up and in again
Soon purring round with his latest one
You endure him, try to cure him?
What’s the use, it can’t be done