(_As Mr. Francis Bret Harte might have woven it into a touching tale of
a western gentleman in a red shirt_)
BROWN o’ San Juan,
Stranger, I’m Brown.
Come up this mornin’ from ’Frisco—
Be’n a-saltin’ my specie-stacks down.
Be’n a-knockin’ around,
Fer a man from San Juan,
Putty consid’able frequent—
Jes’ catch onter that streak o’ the dawn!
Right thar lies my home—
Right thar in the red—
I could slop over, stranger, in po’try—
Would spread out old Shakspoke cold dead.
Stranger, you freeze to this: there ain’t no kinder gin-palace,
Nor no variety-show lays over a man’s own rancho.
Maybe it hain’t no style, but the Queen in the Tower o’ London,
Ain’t got naathin’ I’d swop for that house over thar on the hill-side.
Thar is my ole gal, ’n’ the kids, ’n’ the rest o’ my live-stock;
Thar my Remington hangs, and thar there’s a griddle-cake br’ilin’—
For the two of us, pard—and thar, I allow, the heavens
Smile more friendly-like than on any other locality.
Stranger, nowhere else I don’t take no satisfaction.
Gimme my ranch, ’n’ them friendly old Shanghai chickens—
I brung the original pair f’m the States in eighteen-’n’-fifty—
Gimme me them and the feelin’ of solid domestic comfort.
Yer parding, young man—
But this landscape a kind
Er flickers—I ’low ’twuz the po’try—
I thought that my eyes hed gone blind.
Take that pop from my belt!
Hi, thar!—gimme yer han’—
Or I’ll kill myself—Lizzie—she’s left me—
Gone off with a purtier man!
Thar, I’ll quit—the ole gal
An’ the kids—run away!
I be derned! Howsomever, come in, pard—
The griddle-cake’s thar, anyway.