Square Verses parlour game

Square Verses' was a parlour game that Florence Nightingale used to play with her cousins.

Players were given a question and a word and had to answer the question in rhyme, using the given word.

The two examples in the image are by George Henry Nicholson, Marianne Nicholson’s elder brother and the darling of the ‘Cousinhood’ (This was the name Florence and her cousins gave themselves when they would get together at Waverley Abbey, the Nicholson’s home, during holidays).

Transcript:
Square Verses
Waverley Abbey Monday night
April 12th 1849

Question: How old are you?
Word: “Plaister”
I’m as old as the Hills
Thanks to the pills
Which for all my ills
I’ve taken
But I should not
Have lived so long
Unless my careful master
Had fed me up
And kept me strong
On peppered mustard plaister
x x x x x x x x
G.H.Nicholson

Question: How are you off for soap?
Word: “Pig Stye”
Of Windsor soap, I’ve quite a store
Methinks tis you who need it more
For sure you in a Pig Stye live!
Or would not such a question give!
x x x x x x x x x
Lissie Richardson