(To My Good Friend, Eugene V. Debs.)
Take a feller ’ats sick, and laid up on the shelf,
All shaky, and ga’nted and pore,
And all so knocked out he can’t handle hisself
With a stiff upper lip any more;
Shet him up all alone in the gloom of a room
As dark as a tomb, and as grim,
And then take and send him some roses in bloom,
And you kin have fun out o’ him!
You’ve seed him, ’fore now, when his liver was sound,
And his appetite notched like a saw,
A chaffin’ you, mebby, for romancin’ round
With a big posey bunch in yer paw.
But you ketch him, say, when his health is away
And he’s flat on his back, in distress,
And then you can trot out your little bokay
And not be insulted, I guess!
You see, it’s like this, what his weaknesses is,
Them flowers makes him think of the days
Of his innocent youth, and that mother o’ his,
And the roses she used to raise;
So here all alone with the roses you send,
Bein’ sick and all trimbly and faint,
My eyes is—my eyes is—my eyes is—old friend,
Is a-leakin’—I’m blamed ef they ain’t!
And in the “Hoosier Bard’s” poem “Regardin’ Terry Hut,” appears these
lines:
And there’s ’Gene Debs—a man ’at stands
And jest holds out in his two hands
As warm a heart as ever beat
Betwixt here and the Jedgment Seat.
The picturesque genius, Capt. Jack Crawford, renowned as “The
Poet-Scout,” wrote of Debs:
The same old pard of long ago,
The whole-souled ’Gene I used to know,
With the love of Truth writ on Justice’s scroll,
With a woman’s heart and a warrior’s soul.
At a reception given to Debs by the Denver Press Club Walter Juan Davis
recited these lines, written for the occasion: