Stephanie Miller

How Stephanie Miller's wonderful understanding became known to her father Bill Miller, by the invention of a bum-wiper. (With Apologies to François Rabelais)

About the end of her fourth year, Bill Miller was returning from the Presidential Campaign, went to see his daughter Stephanie Miller. There was he filled with joy, as such a father might be at the sight of such a uni-browed, gray-fanged, webbed-toed wolf-child, and whilst he kissed and hugged her, he asked about many suitably childish matters, and drank very freely with her and with her governesses, the Saintly Nuns of the Sisterhood of the Holy Blessed Bloody Suffering Christ of whom in great earnest he asked, amongst other things, whether they had been careful to keep her clean and sweet. To this Stephanie Miller answered, that she had taken such a course for that herself, that in all the country there was not to be found a cleanlier girl than she.
“How is that?” said Bill Miller.
“I have,” answered Stephanie Miller, “by a long and careful experiment, found a means to wipe my bum, the most lordly, the most excellent, and the most convenient that ever was seen.“
“What is that?” said Bill Miller, “how is it?”
“I will tell you by-and-by,” said Stephanie Miller. “Once I did wipe me with a gentle-woman's velvet mask, and found it to be good; for the softness of the silk was very voluptuous and pleasant to my fundament. Another time with one of their hoods, and in like manner that was comfortable. At another time with a lady's neckerchief, and after that I wiped me with some ear-pieces of hers made of crimson satin, but there was such a number of golden spangles in them (turdy round things, a pox take them) that they fetched away all the skin of my tail with a vengeance. Now I wish St. Antony's fire burn the bum-gut of the goldsmith that made them, and of her that wore them! This hurt I cured by wiping myself with a page's cap, garnished with a feather after the Swiss fashion.
Then, this one time at band-camp, when I was cacking behind some bushes, I found a March-cat, and I wiped myself, but her claws were so sharp that they scratched and exulcerated all my perinee. Of this I recovered the next morning thereafter, by wiping myself with my mother's gloves, of a most excellent perfume. After that I wiped me with sage, with fennel, with anise, with marjoram, with roses, with gourd-leaves, with beets, with colewort, with leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows, wool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves. All this did very great good to my bum. Then with mercury, with parsley, with nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, which I healed by wiping me with a baguette.
Then I wiped my tail in the sheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with the wall-hanging, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, with a napkin, with a handkerchief, with a dressin gown; in all which I found more pleasure than do the mangy dogs when you rub them.”
“Yea, but,” said Bill Miller, “which bum-wipe did you find to be the best?”
“I was coming to it,” said Stephanie Miller, “and by-and-by shall you hear the tu autem, and know the whole mystery and knot of the matter. I wiped myself with hay, with straw, with thatch-rushes, with flax, with wool, with paper, but,
When you your foul tail wipe with paper,
You’ll have to clean your ass with a scrapper.
“What,” said Bill Miller, “my little rogue, hast thou been at the pot, that thou dost rhyme already?”
“Yes, yes, my dear father,” answered Stephanie Miller, “I can rhyme gallantly, and rhyme till I become hoarse with rheum. Hark, what our privy says to the skiters:
Shittard,
Squirtard,
Crackard,
Turdous,
Thy bung
Hath flung
Some dung
On us:
Filthard,
Cackard,
Stinkard,
St. Antony's fire seize on thy toane (bone?),
If thy
Dirty
Dounby
Thou do not wipe, ere thou be gone.
Will you have any more of it?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Bill Miller. Then, said Stephanie Miller,
A Roundelay.
In shitting yes'day I did know
The debt I to my arse did owe:
The smell was such came from that slunk,
That I was with it all bestunk:
O had but then some brave Signor
Brought him to me I waited for,
In shitting!
I would have cleft my watergap,
And join'd it close to his flipflap,
Whilst he had with her fingers guarded
My foul nockandrow, all bemerded
In shitting.
Now tell me I don’t know anything! By the Merdi, they are not of my making, but I heard them of this good old nun, that you see here, and ever since have remembered them.
“Let us return to our purpose,” said Bill Miller.
“What, said Stephanie Miller, pooping?”
“No,” said Bill Miller, “but to wipe our tail.”
“But,” said Stephanie Miller, “will you give me a box of wine, if I do not blank and gravel you in this matter, and put you to a non-plus?”
“Yes, truly”, said Bill Miller.
“There is no need of wiping one's tail,” said Stephanie Miller, “but when it is foul; foul it cannot be, unless one have been a-pooping; poop then we must before we wipe our tails.”
“O my pretty little waggish girl,” said Bill Miller, “what an excellent wit thou hast? I will make thee very shortly proceed doctor in the jovial quirks of gay learning, and that, by God, for thou hast more wit than age. Now, I prithee, go on in this torcheculative, or wipe-bummatory discourse, and by my beard I swear, for one puncheon, thou shalt have threescore boxes, I mean of the good Franzia wine, not that which grows in Britain, but in the good country of California.”
“Afterwards I wiped my bum,” said Stephanie Miller, “with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a pantoufle, with a pouch, with a pannier, but that was a wicked and unpleasant torchecul; then with a hat. Of hats, note that some are shorn, and others shaggy, some velveted, others covered with taffeta, and others with satin. The best of all these is the shaggy hat, for it makes a very neat abstersion of the fecal matter.
Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney's bag, with a hooded cape, with a cap, with a falconer's lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to a nice downy neck of a goose, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honor, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is also the opinion of Barry Goldwater“.