“A man sat on a rock and sought
Refreshment from his thumb;
A dinotherium wandered by
And scared him some.
His name was Smith. The kind of rock
He sat upon was shale.
One feature quite distinguished him—
He had a tail.”

—  David Law Proudfit

Prehistoric Smith, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

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American writer 1842–1897

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