At first it was simply a mild irritation
At his slightly buck-toothed expression.
He carried on, convincingly enough,
But then there was his lisp, you hardly heard it
At first, but gradually it became unmissable:
THs as Fs. It was tedious.
He tended to begin with a slightly out-of-kilter
Remark that caused you to pause,
But then he expanded, rapidly; his voice
Louder by the F, and there was no denial,
Remonstration or disagreement.
His own opinion poured out of him,
Flooding the ears of his unwilling listeners.
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More about this plague and how Marcus Aurelius tried to deal with it
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