THE ENTHUSIAST (somewhat) AFTER W. S. GILBERT

[The below appeared in the June 1920 issue of The Sound Box, a monthly journal for all interested in Phonographs and Gramophones.]

I'm a gramophone enthusiast (ail other sorts are spurious);
My acumen acoustic has a fervour that is furious.
I intimate with all that apertains to sonorosity;
And can analyse the sound waves as to volume and velocity.
I'm death and devastation to the ordinary gramophone;
I turn it inside out and upside down, to get a better tone.
If the horn emits a 'chatter', I, at once, know what to do in it;
I, near the elbow, bore a hole, and then insert a screw in it.
You'd be surprised to notice the improvement instantaneous;
Resulting in an absence of anomalies extraneous.
I'm great at faking diaphragms; I know what to get at in 'em.
I made one once of tripe and reinforced it with some platinum.
This cured all 'blast' and 'surface noise', yet tone was at the maximum
(the servant when she heard it, said "Oh missus, Fetch a taxi, mum!")
With various styles of styli, too, I've much impressed the laity.
If I've not increased our science, I have aided to our gaiety!
For cribbage pegs and tin tacks have effects on reproduction,
Which put all pre-conceptions into something like a fluxion.
And although my cherished notions have occasionally found graves
In criticism's witticism's sea of seething sound-waves.
I still pursue my pathway as a pioneer in phonics;
In the coterie of cranks you'll find me classed among the 'chronics'.
And the correspondence columns of the papers monthly chronicle
My every evolution in science gramophonical.

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