HOW TO READ POETRY
In order to avoid the “singsong” habit, common to so many while reading
poetry, let us remember to make but a very delicate pause at the end of
each line. Of course, if the sense requires a decided pause, one should
not fail to make it. Browning’s “My Star” is a splendid example of where
but a very slight swelling of the voice is necessary to indicate the end
of each line.
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
To illustrate the contrary to this let us refer to a few lines from
Riley’s “The South Wind and the Sun,” noting that the poise of the tone
is considerably longer at the end of each line.
And the humming-bird that hung
Like a jewel up among
The tilted honeysuckle-horns,
They mesmerized and swung
In the palpitating air,
Drowsed with odors strange and rare,
And, with whispered laughter, slipped away
And left him hanging there.
We can hardly overestimate the value of a careful study of the lyric to
the student of expressive speech. It demands superior powers to render
a lyric adequately. Bertha Kuntz Baker, the great American reader, thus
suggestively writes on this subject:
To clarify the diction, go over the poem, word by word, conform
each word carefully, repeatedly to your ideal of that word,
giving the vowel its fullest possible value, tucking in the
consonants as clear, light envelopes around and between the
vowels.
PISGAH-SIGHT
BY ROBERT BROWNING
Good, to forgive:
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
Fretless and free,
Soul, clap thy pinion!
Earth have dominion,
Body, o’er thee!
Wander at will,
Day after day,—
Wander away,
Wandering still—
Soul that canst soar!
Body may slumber:
Body shall cumber
Soul-flight no more.
Waft of soul’s wing!
What lies above?
Sunshine and Love,
Skyblue and Spring!
Body hides—where?
Ferns of all feather,
Mosses and heather,
Yours be the care!
DAWN
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping night.
Night woke to blush: the sprite was gone;
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.
FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL
BY LORD TENNYSON
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
THE WORKER’S GUERDON
BY FRANK PRESTON SMART
Expect nor fame, nor gold, nor any praise—
The world puts not its meed in every hand;
Work on and still be thankful all thy days
If even one shall see and understand!
MY HEART LEAPS UP
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
When we think of melody in speech, we immediately think of the lyric.
In form and in spirit it approaches nearest towards music, for it is
“emotion all compact.” When we have stimulated within us a noble emotion,
we begin at once to respond in some rhythmic action, a beat of our foot,
sway of the body, or humming in a tuneful way. There is melody in prose
as well as in poetry, only it is not so pronounced. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg
Address” is a splendid example of prose-poetry. We are under obligation
to James Raymond Perry in the _North American Review_ for metrically
dividing this oration:
Four score and seven years ago
Our fathers brought forth upon this continent
A new nation conceived in liberty
And dedicated to the proposition
That all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
Testing whether that nation, or any nation
So conceived and so dedicated
Can long endure. We are met
On a great battle field of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of
That field as a final resting place
For those who here gave their lives
That this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper
That we should do this
But in a larger sense
We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
We cannot hallow this ground. The brave men,
Living and dead, who struggled here,
Have consecrated it far above our power
To add or detract. The world will little note
Nor long remember what we say here,
But it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here
To the unfinished work which they who fought here
Have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated
To the great task remaining before us;
That from these honored dead we take
Increased devotion to that cause for which
They gave the last full measure of devotion;
That we here highly resolve that these dead
Shall not have died in vain, that this nation,
Under God, shall have a new birth of freedom;
And that the government of the people,
By the people, and for the people,
Shall not perish from the earth.
Channing’s “Symphony” is another interesting illustration of musical
prose:
To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than
luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not
respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly,
talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, babes and
sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to
be my symphony.
The most striking example of all is the following excerpt taken from
Ingersoll’s oration entitled “A Vision of War”:
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty—they died for us.
They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under
the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the
sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines.
They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of
sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless palace of Rest.
Earth may run red with other wars: they are at peace. In the
midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity
of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead:
Cheers for the living; tears for the dead.
POETICAL SELECTIONS
Colloquial
Humorous
Humorous Dialect
Pathetic
Dramatic
Sublime
Lyric
Poetry is the highest, most beautiful and perfect verbal expression of
thought allowed to man. The higher the poetry the more is it permeated
with elevating human emotion.
COLLOQUIAL SELECTIONS IN POETRY
THE PESSIMIST
BY BEN KING
Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes
To keep one from going nude.
Nothing to breathe but air;
Quick as a flash ’tis gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.
Nothing to comb but hair,
Nowhere to sleep but in bed,
Nothing to weep but tears,
Nothing to bury but dead.
Nothing to sing but songs,
Ah, well, alas! alack!
Nowhere to go but out,
Nowhere to come but back.
Nothing to see but sights,
Nothing to quench but thirst,
Nothing to have but what we’ve got;
Thus through life we are cursed.
Nothing to strike but a gait;
Everything moves that goes.
Nothing at all but common sense
Can ever withstand these woes.
THE RIVALS
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
’Twas three an’ thirty year ago,
When I was ruther young, you know,
I had my last an’ only fight
About a gal one summer night.
’Twas me an’ Zekel Johnson; Zeke
’N’ me ’d be’n spattin’ ’bout a week,
Each of us tryin’ his best to show
That he was Liza Jones’s beau.
We couldn’t neither prove the thing,
Fur she was fur too sharp to fling
One over fur the other one
An’ by so doin’ stop the fun
That we chaps didn’t have the sense
To see she got at our expense.
But that’s the way a feller does,
Fur boys is fools an’ allus was;
An’ when they’s females in the game
I reckon men’s about the same.
Well, Zeke an’ me went on that way
An’ fussed an’ quarreled day by day;
While Liza, mindin’ not the fuss,
Jest kep’ a-goin’ with both of us,
Tell we pore chaps, that’s Zeke an’ me,
Was jest plum mad with jealousy.
Well, fur a time we kep’ our places,
An’ only showed by frownin’ faces
An’ looks ’at well our meanin’ boded
How full o’ fight we both was loaded.
At last it come, the thing broke out,
An’ this is how it come about.
One night (’twas fair, you’ll all agree)
I got Eliza’s company,
An’ leavin’ Zekel in the lurch,
Went trottin’ off with her to church.
An’ jest as we had took our seat,
(Eliza lookin’ fair an’ sweet),
Why, I jest couldn’t help but grin
When Zekel come a-bouncin’ in
As furious as the law allows.
He’d jest be’n up to Liza’s house,
To find her gone, then come to church
To have this end put to his search.
I guess I laffed that meetin’ through,
An’ not a mortal word I knew
Of what the preacher preached er read
Er what the choir sung er said.
Fur every time I’d turn my head
I couldn’t skeercely help but see
’At Zekel had his eye on me.
An’ he ’ud sort o’ turn an’ twist
An’ grind his teeth an’ shake his fist.
I laughed, fur la! the hull church seen us,
An’ knowed that suthin’ was between us.
Well, meetin’ out, we started hum,
I sorter feelin’ what would come.
We’d jest got out, when up stepped Zeke,
An’ said, “Scuse me, I’d like to speak
To you a minute.” “Cert,” said I—
A-nudgin’ Liza on the sly
An’ laughin’ in my sleeve with glee,
I asked her, please, to pardon me.
We walked away a step er two,
Jest to git out o’ Liza’s view,
An’ then Zeke said, “I want to know
Ef you think you’re Eliza’s beau,
An’ ’at I’m goin’ to let her go
Hum with sich a chap as you?”
An’ I said bold, “You bet I do.”
Then Zekel, sneerin’, said ’at he
Didn’t want to hender me,
But then he ’lowed the gal was his
An’ ’at he guessed he knowed his biz,
An’ wasn’t feared o’ all my kin
With all my friends an’ chums throwed in.
Some other things he mentioned there
That no born man could no ways bear
Er think o’ ca’mly tryin’ to stan’
Ef Zeke had be’n the bigges’ man
In town, an’ not the leanest runt
’At time an’ labor ever stunt.
An’ so I let my fist go “bim.”
I thought I’d mos’ nigh finished him.
But Zekel didn’t take it so.
He jest ducked down an’ dodged my blow
An’ then come back at me so hard,
I guess I must ’a’ hurt the yard,
Er spilet the grass plot where I fell,
An’ sakes alive it hurt me; well,
It wouldn’t be’n so bad you see,
But he jest kep’ a-hittin’ me.
An’ I hit back an’ kicked an’ pawed,
But ’t seemed ’twas mostly air I clawed,
While Zekel used his science well
A-makin’ every motion tell.
He punched an’ hit, why, goodness lands,
Seemed like he had a dozen hands.
Well, afterwhile, they stopped the fuss,
An’ some one kindly parted us.
All beat an’ cuffed an’ clawed an’ scratched,
An’ needin’ both our faces patched,
Each started hum a different way;
An’ what o’ Liza, do you say,
Why, Liza—little humbug—darn her,
Why, she’d gone home with Hiram Turner.
—Copyright by _Dodd, Mead & Co._, New York, and used by special
arrangement.
THE FIRST FURROW
BY JAMES J. MONTAGUE
Don’t you ever feel a yearnin’, ’long about this time o’ year,
For a robin’s song to tell you that the summer time is near?
Don’t you ever sort o’ hanker for the blackbird’s whistlin’ call,
Echoin’ through the hillside orchard, where the blossoms used to fall?
Don’t you wish that you were out there, breathin’ in the April air,
Full o’ glad an’ careless boyhood, an’ with strength an’ health to spare?
Don’t it _hurt_ you to remember, when the springtime comes around,
How the first, long, rollin’ furrow used to wake the sleepy ground?
How’d you like to take the children, born to dirty city streets,
Out to where the brook goes pulsin’ when the heart o’ nature beats?
How’d you like to watch ’em wonder at the boomin’ of the bees,
Or to see ’em dodge the petals that are snowin’ from the trees?
How’d you like to see their faces catch the color o’ the rose,
As they raced across the meadow where the earliest crocus grows?
Wouldn’t it be joy to watch ’em follow on behind the plow,
As it cut the first brown furrow, like it’s doin’ out there now?
SUNSHINE
BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS
Some people have the sunshine,
While others have the rain;
But God don’t change the weather
Because the folks complain.
Don’t waste your time in grumbling,
Nor wrinkle up your brow;
Some other soul has trouble,
Most likely has it now.
When nature lies in shadow,
On damp and cloudy days,
Don’t blame the sun, good people,
But loan a few bright rays.
The sun is always shining
Above the misty shroud,
And if your world be murky,
The fault lies in the cloud.
Take sunshine to your neighbor,
In all you do and say;
Have sunshine in your labor,
And sunshine in your play.
Where’er the storm-cloud lowers,
Take in the sunlight glow,
And Heaven will show what flowers
From seeds of kindness grow.
—Copyright by _Forbes & Co._, Chicago, and used by kind permission of
author and publisher.
“CICELY”
ALKALI STATION
BY BRET HARTE
Cicely says you’re a poet: maybe; I ain’t much on rhyme:
I reckon you’d give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry!—that’s the way some chaps puts up an idee,
But I takes mine “straight without sugar,” and that’s what’s the matter
with me.
Poetry!—just look round you,—alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain’t it a pretty page!
Sun in the east at mornin’, sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this ’yer station the on’y thing moves in sight.
Poetry!—Well now—Polly! Polly run to your mam;
Run right away, my pooty! By by! Ain’t she a lamb?
Poetry!—that reminds me o’ suthin’ right in that suit:
Jest shet that door thar, will yer?—for Cicely’s ears is cute.
Ye noticed Polly,—the baby? A month afore she was born,
Cicely—my old woman—was moody-like and forlorn;
Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees;
Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman be’s.
Narvous she was, and restless,—said that she “couldn’t stay,”
Stay,—and the nearest woman seventeen miles away.
But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand,
And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o’ land.
One night,—the tenth of October,—I woke with a chill and fright,
For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn’t in sight,
But a note was pinned on the blanket, which said that she “couldn’t
stay,”
But had gone to visit her neighbor,—seventeen miles away.
When and how she stampeded, I didn’t wait for to see,
For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she:
Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the scent,
For there warn’t no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went.
I’ve had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,—
Lost on the plains in ’50, drowned almost, and shot;
But out on this alkali desert, a hunting a crazy wife,
Was ra’ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.
“Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!” I called, and I held my breath,
And “Cicely!” came from the canyon,—and all was as still as death.
And “Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!” came from the rocks below,
And jest but a whisper of “Cicely!” down from them peaks of snow.
I ain’t what you call religious,—but I jest looked up to the sky,
And—this ’yer’s to what I’m coming, and maybe ye think I lie:
But up away to the east’ard, yaller and big and far,
I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star.
Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me:
Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see:
Big and yaller and dancing,—I never saw such a star,
And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then and
thar.
Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead:
Keeping the star afore me, I went wharever it led.
It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh,
Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby’s cry.
Listen! thar’s the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now
Than the day I packed her and her mother,—I’m derned if I jest know how.
But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o’ the whole thing is
That Cis. never knew what happened from that very night to this!
But Cicely says you’re a poet, and maybe you might, some day,
Jest sling her a rhyme ’bout a baby that was born in a curious way,
And see what she says; but, old fellow, when you speak of the star,
don’t tell
As how ’twas the doctor’s lantern,—for maybe ’twon’t sound so well.
—Copyright by _Houghton Mifflin & Co._, Boston, and used by their kind
permission.
AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE
BY ALICE CARY
O good painter, tell me true,
Has your hand the cunning to draw
Shapes of things that you never saw?
Ay? Well, here is an order for you.
Woods and cornfields, a little brown,—
The picture must not be over-bright,—
Yet all in the golden and gracious light
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.
Alway and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn
Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full thick, leafy bloom,
When the wind can hardly find breathing-room
Under their tassels,—cattle near,
Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumach and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around,—
(Ah, good painter, you can’t paint sound)—
These and the house where I was born,
Low and little, and black and old,
With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows, open wide,—
Heads and shoulders clear outside,
And fair young faces all ablush:
Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding the selfsame way,
Out of a wilding, wayside bush.
Listen closer. When you have done
With woods and cornfields and grazing herds,
A lady, the loveliest ever the sun
Looked down upon, you must paint for me;
Oh, if I only could make you see
The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The woman’s soul, and the angel’s face
That are beaming on me all the while!—
I need not speak these foolish words:
Yet one word tells you all I would say,—
She is my mother: you will agree
That all the rest may be thrown away.
Two little urchins at her knee
You must paint, sir: one like me,—
The other with a clearer brow,
And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise:
At ten years old he went to sea,—
God knoweth if he be living now,—
He sailed in the good ship _Commodore_,—
Nobody ever crossed her track
To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, ’tis twenty long years and more
Since that old ship went out of the bay
With my great-hearted brother on her deck;
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.
Bright his hair was, a golden brown,
The time we stood at our mother’s knee:
That beauteous head, if it did go down,
Carried sunshine into the sea.
Out in the fields one summer night
We were together, half afraid
Of the corn leaves rustling, and of the shade
Of the high hills, stretching so far and still,—
Loitering till after the low little light
Of the candle shone through the open door,
And over the haystack’s pointed top,
All of a tremble, and ready to drop,
The first half-hour, the great yellow star
That we with staring, ignorant eyes,
Had often and often watched to see
Propped and held in its place in the skies
By the fork of a tall, red mulberry tree,
Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,—
Dead at the top—just one branch full
Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool,
From which it tenderly shook the dew
Over our heads, when we came to play
In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day:—
Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,—
The other, a bird held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat:
The berries we gave her she wouldn’t eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.
ONE, TWO, THREE
BY HENRY C. BUNNER
It was an old, old, old, old lady,
And a boy who was half-past three,
And the way that they played together
Was beautiful to see.
She couldn’t go running and jumping,
And the boy, no more could he;
For he was a thin little fellow,
With a thin little twisted knee.
They sat in the yellow sunlight,
Out under the maple tree;
And the game that they played I’ll tell you,
Just as it was told to me.
It was hide-and-go-seek they were playing,
Though you’d never have known it to be—
With an old, old, old, old lady,
And a boy with a twisted knee.
The boy would bend his face down
On his one little sound right knee,
And he’d guess where she was hiding,
In guesses One, Two, Three.
“You are in the china closet!”
He would cry, and laugh with glee.
It wasn’t the china closet;
But he still had Two and Three.
“You are up in papa’s big bedroom,
In the chest with the queer old key!”
And she said: “You are warm and warmer;
But you’re not quite right,” said she.
“It can’t be the little cupboard
Where Mamma’s things used to be,
So it must be the clothespress, Gran’ma!”
And he found her with his Three.
Then she covered her face with her fingers,
That were wrinkled and white and wee,
And she guessed where the boy was hiding,
With a One and a Two and a Three.
And they never had stirred from their places,
Right under the maple tree—
This old, old, old, old lady,
And the boy with a lame little knee;
This dear, dear, dear old lady,
And the boy who was half-past three.
RECIPROCITY
BY H. BEDFORD-JONES
Would you have men play square with you,
Play fair with you, and bear with you
In all the little weaknesses so easy to condemn?
Then simply try to do the same—
Hold up your head and play the game,
And when the others are to blame
Be sure to bear with them!
Would you have men, when new to you,
Be true to you and do to you
The things that faith and brother-love and nothing else impel?
Then give them faith and brother-love
And set sincerity above
All other things—and it will prove
That you have builded well!
THE YOUNG TRAMP
BY CHAS. F. ADAMS
Hello, thar, stranger! Whar yer frum?
Come in and make yerself ter hum!
We’re common folks, ain’t much on style;
Come in and stop a little while;
’Twon’t do no harm ter rest yer some.
Youngster, yer pale, and don’t look well!
What, way from Bosting? Naow, dew tell!
Why, that’s a hundred mile or so;
What started yer, I’d like ter know,
On sich a tramp; got goods ter sell?
No home, no friends? Naow that’s too bad!
Wall, cheer up, boy, and don’t be sad,—
Wife, see what yer can find ter eat,
And put the coffee on ter heat,—
We’ll fix yer up all right, my lad.
Willing ter work, can’t git a job,
And not a penny in yer fob?
Wall, naow, that’s rough, I dew declare!
What, tears? Come, youngster, I can’t bear
Ter see yer take on so, and sob.
How came yer so bad off, my son?
Father was killed? ’Sho’; whar? Bull Run?
Why, I was in that scrimmage, lad,
And got used up, too, pretty bad;
I shan’t forgit old ’sixty-one!
So yer were left in Bosting, hey!
A baby when he went away?
Those Bosting boys were plucky, wife,
Yer know one of ’em saved my life,
Else I would not be here to-day.
’Twas when the “Black Horse Cavalcade”
Swept down on our small brigade,
I got the shot that made me lame,
When down on me a trooper came,
And this ’ere chap struck up his blade.
Poor feller! He was stricken dead;
The trooper’s sabre cleaved his head.
Joe Billings was my comrade’s name,
He was a Bosting boy, and game!
I almost wished I’d died, instead.
Why, lad! what makes yer tremble so?
Your father! what, my comrade Joe?
And you his son? Come ter my heart.
My home is yours; I’ll try in part,
Ter pay his boy the debt I owe.
HULLO!
BY SAM WALTER FOSS
When you see a man in woe,
Walk straight up and say, “Hullo!”
Say “Hullo!” and “How d’ye do?
How’s the world been using you?”
Slap the fellow on his back,
Bring your hand down with a whack!
Waltz straight up and don’t go slow,
Shake his hand and say “Hullo!”
Is he clothed in rags? Oh, ho.
Walk straight up and say “Hullo!”
Rags are but a cotton roll
Just for wrapping up a soul;
And a soul is worth a true
Hale and hearty “How d’ye do?”
Don’t wait for the crowd to go.
Walk straight up and say “Hullo!”
When big vessels meet, they say,
They salute and sail away;
Just the same as you and me,
Lonely ships upon the sea,
Each one sailing his own jog
For a port beyond the fog;
Let your speaking trumpet blow,
Lift your horn and cry, “Hullo!”
Say “Hullo!” and “How d’ye do?”
Other folks are good as you.
When you leave your house of clay,
Wandering in the far away,
When you travel through the strange
Country far beyond the range,
Then the souls you’ve cheered will know
Who you be, and say “Hullo!”
COLUMBUS
BY ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
How in heaven’s name did Columbus get over,
Is a pure wonder to me, I protest,
Cabot, and Raleigh, too, that well-read rover,
Frobisher, Dampier, Drake, and the rest;
Bad enough all the same,
For them that after came;
But in great heaven’s name,
How he should think
That on the other brink
Of this wild waste, terra firma should be,
Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.
How a man should ever hope to get thither,
E’en if he knew that there was another side;
But to suppose he should come any whither,
Sailing straight on into chaos untried,
In spite of the motion,
Across the whole ocean,
To stick to the notion
That in some nook or bend
Of a sea without end,
He should find North and South America,
Was a pure madness, indeed, I must say.
What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy,
Judged that the earth like an orange was round,
None of them ever said, Come along, follow me,
Sail to the West, and the East will be found.
Many a day before
Ever they’d come ashore
Sadder and wiser men,
They’d have turned back again;
And that he did not, but did cross the sea,
Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.
—Copyright by _Macmillan & Co._, New York, and used by arrangement.
THE USUAL WAY
ANONYMOUS
There was once a little man, and his rod and line he took,
For he said, “I’ll go a-fishing in the neighboring brook.”
And it chanced a little maiden was walking out that day,
And they met—in the usual way.
Then he sat down beside her, and an hour or two went by,
But still upon the grassy brink his rod and line did lie;
“I thought,” she shyly whispered, “you’d be fishing all the day!”
And he was—in the usual way.
So he gravely took his rod in hand and threw the line about,
But the fish perceived distinctly he was not looking out;
And he said, “Sweetheart, I love you,” but she said she could not stay,
But she did—in the usual way.
Then the stars came out above them, and she gave a little sigh
As they watched the silver ripples like the moments running by;
“We must say good-by,” she whispered by the alders old and gray.
And they did—in the usual way.
And day by day beside the stream, they wandered to and fro,
And day by day the fishes swam securely down below,
Till this little story ended, as such little stories may,
Very much—in the usual way.
And now that they are married, do they always bill and coo?
Do they never fret and quarrel, like other couples do?
Does he cherish her and love her? Does she honor and obey?
Well, they do—in the usual way.
HUMOROUS SELECTIONS IN POETRY
LITTLE MISS STUDY AND LITTLE MISS PLAY
BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS
Little Miss Study and little Miss Play,
Each came to the school from an opposite way;
While little Miss Study could always recite,
This little Miss Play hardly ever was right;
For little Miss Study found she could do more
By learning her lessons the evening before;
But, fond of a frolic, this little Miss Play
Would put off her lessons until the next day.
At the head of her class Miss Study was put,
While little Miss Play had to stay at the foot!
Thus little Miss Study and little Miss Play
Went onward through life—in an opposite way.
—Copyright by _Forbes & Co._, Chicago, and used by kind permission of
author and publisher.
A SIMILAR CASE
ANONYMOUS
Jack, I hear you’ve gone and done it,—
Yes, I know; most fellows will;
Went and tried it once myself, sir,
Though you see I’m single still.
And you met her—did you tell me—
Down at Newport, last July,
And resolved to ask the question
At a soiree?—So did I.
I suppose you left the ball-room,
With its music and its light;
For they say Love’s flame is brightest
In the darkness of the night.
Well, you walked along together,
Overhead, the starlit sky;
And I’ll bet—old man, confess it—
You were frightened.—So was I.
So you strolled along the terrace,
Saw the summer moonlight pour,
All its radiance on the waters,
As they rippled on the shore,
Till at length you gathered courage,
When you saw that none was nigh—
Did you draw her close and tell her,
That you loved her?—So did I.
Well, I needn’t ask you further,
And I’m sure I wish you joy,
Think I’ll wander down and see you
When you’re married,—eh, my boy?
When the honeymoon is over
And you’re settled down, we’ll try—
What? The deuce you say! Rejected?
You rejected?—So was I.
IRISH CASTLES
BY FITZ-JAMES O’BRIEN
“Sweet Norah, come here, and look into the fire;
Maybe in its embers good luck we might see;
But don’t come too near, or your glances so shining,
Will put it clean out, like the sunbeams, machree!
“Just look ’twixt the sods, where so brightly they’re burning,
There’s a sweet little valley, with rivers and trees,
And a house on the bank, quite as big as the squire’s—
Who knows but some day we’ll have something like these?
“And now there’s a coach and four galloping horses,
A coachman to drive, and a footman behind;
That betokens some day we will keep a fine carriage,
And dash through the streets with the speed of the wind.”
As Dermot was speaking, the rain down the chimney,
Soon quenched the turf-fire on the hollowed hearth-stone:
While mansion and carriage, in smoke-wreaths evanished,
And left the poor dreamer dejected and lone.
Then Norah to Dermot, these words softly whispered:
“’Tis better to strive than to vainly desire:
And our little hut by the roadside is better
Than palace, and servants, and coach—in the fire!”
’Tis years since poor Dermot his fortune was dreaming—
Since Norah’s sweet counsel effected its cure;
For, ever since then hath he toiled night and morning,
And now his snug mansion looks down on the Suir.
THE DEACON’S DRIVE
BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS
Good Deacon Jones, although a pious man,
Was not constructed on the meager plan;
And he so loved the Sabbath day of rest,
Of all the seven deemed it far the best;
Could he have made the year’s allotment o’er,
He would have put in many rest-days more.
One Sunday morn, on sacred matters bent,
With his good wife, to church the deacon went.
And since there was no fear of being late,
The horse slow jogged along his Sunday gait.
This horse he got by trading with a Jew,
And called him Moses,—nothing else would do.
He’d been a race-horse in his palmy days,
But now had settled down, to pious ways,—
Save now and then backsliding from his creed,
When overtempted to a burst of speed.
’Twas early, and the deacon’s wife was driving,
While from the book the deacon hard was striving
On sacred things to concentrate his mind—
The sound of clattering hoofs is heard behind;
Old Mose pricked up his ears and sniffed the air;
The deacon mused: “Some racers, I declare!
Fast horse, fast man, fast speeds the life away,
While sluggish blood is slow to disobey!”
He closed the book; he’d read enough of psalms—
And, looking backward, spat upon his palms,
Then grabbed the sagging reins: “Land sakes alive!
It’s late, Jerushee, guess I’d better drive!”
The wife suspects there’s something on his mind;
Adjusts her spectacles and looks behind:
“Pull out, good Silas, let that sinner past
Who breaks the Sabbath day by drivin’ fast!
What pretty horses; he’s some city chap;
My, how he drives; he’ll meet with some mishap!
Be quick thar, Silas; further to the side;
He’s comin’; thank the Lord the road is wide!
Jes’ look at Mose; if he ain’t in fer war!
Say, Silas, what on earth you bracin’ for?
Old man, have you forgot what day it is?”
“Git up thar, Mose! Jerushee, mind yer biz!”
“Upon my soul, look how that nag’s a-pacin’;
Why, Silas, dear, I do believe you’re racin’!
Land sakes alive, what will the people say?
Good Deacon Jones a-racin’, Sabbath day!”
“Jerushee, now you hold yer pious tongue,
And save yer voice until the hymns are sung!
‘Make haste unto the Lord;’ that’s the command;
We’re bound fer church—I trust you understand!”
“But goin’ to church, good Silas, racin’ so,
Will bring us into heaven mighty slow!”
“Hush up, Jerushee, else you’ll make us late;
Gelong thar, Moses—strike yer winnin’ gait!
God gave him speed and now’s his time to show it;
If that’s a sin, I never want to know it.”
A loving wife to acquiescence used,
Jerusha soon begins to get enthused.
Said she: “Don’t leave the church folk disappointed,
Nor let the ungodly beat the Lord’s anointed!”
“You’re right, Jerushee, thar yer head is level,
In life’s long race the saint must beat the devil;
Though on this Hebrew horse depend we must
To keep the Christian from the sinner’s dust.
That’s right, Jerushee, give old Mose the birch,
Fer here’s a race: The world ag’in’ the church;
Both Testaments are at it fer their lives—
The Old one pacin’ while the New one drives;
And Satan’s found at last all he can do
To tackle both the Gentile and the Jew.”
The stranger’s horses come at such a pace
They dash ahead as if to take the race.
“The jig is up, Jerushee; guess he’ll beat;
He’s in the lead, and Mose is off his feet.”
“What talk is that? Now, Silas, don’t you scoff;
How can he jig if all his feet are off?
And now you say he’s struck his gait at last,
I feared he’d strike on suthin’, goin’ so fast.”
The stranger cries: “Come on, old Sanctimony,
Old wife, old wagon, and old rack-a-bony!”
Jerusha’s dander’s up; Jerusha’s mad;
She grabs her bonnet and applies the gad.
And Mose at last has struck his old-time speed;
For once the Jew and Gentile are agreed.
Around the church the gathered country folk
Observe: “The Sabbath day is bein’ broke.”
With eager eye and half-averted face,
Though some condemn, yet all observe the race.
“Land sakes!” cries one, “I’ll bet ye ten t’ tew
It’s Deacon Jones a-drivin’ that ar Jew.”
“I can’t bet much, but here’s my life upon it—
That thar’s Jerushee—I know her by the bonnet!”
Along the dusty road the horses speed,
And inch by inch old Moses takes the lead.
Jerusha gets excited, now she’s winning,
And all her former anger dies a-grinning.
“Come on, old Disbelief, old Satan’s crony,
Don’t lag behind on any ceremony!
Take my advice: Before you give much sass
Jes’ turn yer horses out on Sunday grass.”
Old Mose had forged ahead at such a rate
The Deacon couldn’t stop him at the gate;
The more he pulled the faster Mose would go;
Jerusha grabbed one line and hollered: “Whoa!”
Which swung him in; the buggy with a crash,
Swinging against the horse-block, went to smash.
The pastor said: “I hope you broke no bones,
Although you broke the Sabbath, Deacon Jones.”
“Don’t blame this onto Sile,” Jerusha said:
“But on that hoss; you know he’s Jewish bred,
An’ won’t do nothin’ Saturday but rest;
On Sunday he breaks loose like all possessed.
At least we’re here and safe, therefore rejoice,
But I shall sing no more, I’ve strained my voice!”
“I thought ’twould break,” they heard the pastor say,
“It has been cracked for many, many a day.”
—Copyright by _Forbes & Co._, Chicago, and used by kind permission of
author and publisher.
THE CHRISTMAS RING
BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS
May was pretty, plump and pretty, and with such a lovely soul
That a smile lit up her features like a mental aureole.
People gazed in admiration—always listened—when she talked
Always made you think of roses, but she limped whene’er she walked.
Nothing crippled, nothing shriveled, nothing of the withered sort;
Just a perfect human being, save one leg a trifle short;
As though nature had intended her the rarest of her kind
But fell short of precious matter and no substitute could find.
Fair as polished alabaster that had wakened from its dream;
But so modest and retiring she held every one’s esteem.
Though her imperfection grieved her more than anybody knew,
Yet her life was like the heavens when the stars are peeping through.
At first sight of her you’d fancy as you blinked your startled eyes
You had chanced upon a seraph who had taken human guise:
As a man will gaze in wonder at a jewel on the ground
Ere he quite believes his senses that a treasure had been found.
Enter handsome, kindly David: comes a stranger to the place,
Searching for the soul of beauty hid behind a maiden face;
Not among the belles of fashion, not among the aimless kind,
Could he find the perfect woman he had pictured in his mind.
Thought to find a truer sweetheart in some pretty village lass;
Find his lily of the valley in the higher middle class;
Out among the quiet people where his riches were unknown,
Some fair maid whose homely virtues would appreciate his own.
It was at a social function where he met the charming May
And her sister, Belle, the elder, quite as handsome in her way.
May was sunny, sweet and gentle—Belle was haughty and austere;
While ambition strode beside her just a little bit too near.
As a gentleman of leisure, David played the friendly rôle,
As contented as a youngster when he’s at a sugar-bowl.
David laid no special favor upon either Belle or May,
But he whispered things to Cupid—told him all he had to say.
Yet he played the gallant nobly, exercising all his art:
Hid behind the cunning Cupid he deployed to hide his heart.
May grew ever more unselfish, giving way to Sister Belle,
Till Dan Cupid felt like starting in a raucous college yell.
Belle had been the child of favor—May the daughter of regret;
One the Mount of Delectation, one the Mount of Olivet.
That a man preferred her sister was to Belle almost absurd:
She took everything for granted—simply waiting David’s word.
Custom bids one ask the parents—though he heed not what they say—
If a lover love a lover love will get her anyway.
So when David sought permission he was just a bit obscure—
Which was laid to nervous tension such as lovers must endure.
May I win your noblest daughter? Both fond parents gave consent;
Thinking Belle the one intended—straight to her the father went.
Belle, too vain to hold the secret, poured it in the ears of May:
How the heart grows disappointed when a hope has gone astray.
As a graduate from college, David had excuse for staying,
But he gave the pair no inkling of the love-game he was playing.
Through the summer and the autumn David studied well his art:
Read up Cupid on devotion and the psychics of the heart.
At the Church on Christmas evening David played the Santa Claus:
Telling stories to the children; gaining laughter and applause;
Handed out the many presents till the tree was stripped and bare;
Gave to Belle a jewel-sunburst which she fastened in her hair.
With no special gift from David, May was getting trouble-hearted,
But by dint of constant smiling kept the tears from getting started.
In the midst of the excitement David cast off his disguise;
Gave a rousing speech of greeting, closing up with this surprise:
“Friends, I have an extra present, ’tis the last one on the tree,
For the Queen of Love and Beauty, choice of all the world to me:
One with that angelic nature, Heaven only can bestow;
But with just enough of human to detain her here below.
I have read her secret often as the star man reads the skies,
Till the horoscope got tangled in the flashlight of her eyes.
With a love beyond endurance and a wealth beyond control,
I have come to claim my sweetheart with the treasures of my soul.
As a symbol of devotion I have brought this solitaire—
For my heart is in the girdle and her name is graven there.”
All are thrilled with expectation; every neck is craned to see
Who possesses all these virtues; whom the wonder maid can be.
Down the aisle our David hastened—passing Belle upon the way,
Till he paused to place the jewel on the pretty hand of May.
With her bosom over-flowing, May could utter not a word,
But her eyes and lips gave answer in the silence David heard.
And the tear that sorrow started changing quick to love’s employ,
Trembled on her heavy lashes like a messenger of joy.
While her cheek has turned to crimson, down the drop of rapture goes,
Stopping there awhile to glisten like a dewdrop on a rose.
Can you measure love’s emotion when a sorrow turns to bliss,
When a maid whose heart is broken has it mended with a kiss?
It is said the first known lovers—and I think they do it yet,
As first aid in pressing cases, used their arms as tourniquet.
David kissed her there in public, and he hugged her all he could;
May had half-way hoped he wouldn’t, then she half-way hoped he would.
Though they broke a social custom, none was there to make ado,
And the pastor’s benediction, _just for once, was just for two_.
—Copyright by author and used by his kind permission.
CUPID SWALLOWED
BY LEIGH HUNT
T’other day, as I was twining
Roses for a crown to dine in,
What, of all things, midst the heap,
Should I light on, fast asleep,
But the little desperate elf,—
The tiny traitor,—Love himself!
By the wings I pinched him up
Like a bee, and in a cup
Of my wine I plunged and sank him,
And d’ye think I did?—I drank him!
Faith, I thought him dead. Not he!
There he lives with ten-fold glee;
And now this moment, with his wings,
I feel him tickling my heart-strings.
THE VINEGAR MAN
BY RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
The crazy old Vinegar Man is dead! He never had missed a day before!
Somebody went to his tumble-down shed, by the Haunted House, and forced
the door.
There in the litter of his pungent pans, the murky mess of his mixing
place,—
Deep, sticky spiders and empty cans—with the same old frown on his sour
old face.
“Vinegar-Vinegar-Vinegar Man!
Face-us-and-chase-us-and-catch-if-you-can!
Pepper for a tongue! Pickle for a nose!
Stick a pin in him and vinegar flows!
Glare-at-us-swear-at-us-catch-if-you-can!
Ketch-up-and-chow-chow-and-Vinegar-Man!”
Nothing but recipes and worthless junk; greasy old records of paid and
due;
But, down in the depths of a battered old trunk, a queer, quaint
valentine torn in two—
Red hearts and arrows, and silver lace, and a prim, dim, ladylike
script that said—
(Oh, Vinegar Man, with the sour old face!)—“With dearest love, from
Ellen to Ned!”
“Steal-us-and-peel-us-and-drown-us-in-brine!
He pickles his heart in”—a valentine!
“Vinegar for blood! Pepper for tongue!
Stick a pin in him and”—once he was young!
“Glare-at-us-swear-at-us-catch-if-you-can!”
“With dearest love”—to the Vinegar Man!
Dingy little books of profit and loss (died about Saturday, so they say)
And a queer, quaint valentine, torn across ... torn, but it never was
thrown away!
“With dearest love from Ellen to Ned”—“Old Pepper Tongue! Pickles his
heart in brine!”
The Vinegar Man is a long time dead: he died when he tore his valentine.
—Copyright by _The Century Co._, New York, and used by kind permission of
author and publisher.
HIS FAVORITE
She was a dainty little maid,
And he was very tall;
They gathered all the flowers
That grew by the garden wall.
“My favorite is the rose,” said she,
“Do you prefer the pink?
Perhaps you’re fond of hollyhocks,
You’re just like them, I think.
“You’re rather stiff and very tall
And nod your head just so
For all the world like hollyhocks
When summer breezes blow.
“But won’t you tell me what
Your favorites are?
For if I only knew,”
(The words were soft and low),
“I’d try to raise a few.”
“My favorites,” he answered,
“This moment I can see.
I’m looking at your two lips,—
Will you raise tulips for me?”
THE MOURNFUL TALE OF THE SNEE ZEE FAMILEE
BY A. J. WATERHOUSE
There was a little yellow man whose name it was Ah Cheu,
And every time that Mongol sneezed he told his name to you.
This funny little yellow man had wedded Tish Ah Chee,
And they, when certain time had passed, had children one, two, three.
There was little Ah Cheu
And Tish Ah Tsu,
And the baby was named Ker Chee,
And their Uncle Ker Chawl
And his wife were all
Of the Snee Zee fam-i-lee,
And when the mamma stood and called her children from the door,
You would laugh and laugh for an hour and a half if never you laughed
before.
“Ah Cheu,” she’d say in her feminine way, “bring in little Ker Chee,
And Tish Ah Tsu, bring him in, too, to the Snee Zee fam-i-lee.”
Alas and alack! but my voice will crack as the mournful tale I tell.
To that sweet little band in the Mongol land a terrible fate befell.
On a summer day in a sportive way they called one another all,
And over and o’er the names they bore they would call and call and call.
They called Ah Cheu
And Tish Ah Tsu
And the baby Ker Chee, Ker Chee,
And their Uncle Ker Chawl,
They called them all,
Till they’re dead as dead can be.
Ah Cheu was tough, and was used to snuff, so he lived at his fate to
scoff,
But the rest are dead, as I’ve heretofore said, for their heads they
were all sneezed off.
And this is the tale I have tried to wail of Ah Cheu and his little
Ker Chee
And Tish Ah Tsu and Ah Chee, too, of the Snee Zee fam-i-lee.
—From “Lays for Little Chaps.”
TO A USURPER
BY EUGENE FIELD
Aha! a traitor in the camp,
A rebel strangely bold,—
A lisping, laughing, toddling scamp,
Not more than four years old!
To think that I, who’ve ruled alone
So proudly in the past,
Should be ejected from my throne
By my own son at last!
He trots his treason to and fro,
As only babies can,
And says he’ll be his mamma’s beau
When he’s a “Gweat, big man!”
You stingy boy! you’ve always had
A share in mamma’s heart;
Would you begrudge your poor old dad
The tiniest little part?
That mamma, I regret to see,
Inclines to take your part,—
As if a dual monarchy
Should rule her gentle heart!
But when the years of youth have sped,
The bearded man, I trow,
Will quite forget he ever said
He’d be his mamma’s beau.
Renounce your treason, little son,
Leave mamma’s heart to me;
For there will come another one
To claim your loyalty.
And when that other comes to you,
God grant her love may shine
Through all your life, as fair and true
As mamma’s does through mine!
MY RIVAL
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
I go to concert, party, ball—
What profit is in these?
I sit alone against the wall
And strive to look at ease.
The incense that is mine by right
They burn before her shrine;
And that’s because I’m seventeen
And she is forty-nine.
I cannot check my girlish blush,
My color comes and goes;
I redden to my finger-tips,
And sometimes to my nose.
And she is white where white should be,
And red where red should shine.
The blush that flies at seventeen
Is fixed at forty-nine.
I wish _I_ had her constant cheek:
I wish that I could sing
All sorts of funny little songs,
Not quite the proper thing.
I’m very gauche and very shy,
Her jokes aren’t in my line;
And worst of all, I’m seventeen
While she is forty-nine.
The young men come, the young men go,
Each pink and white and neat,
She’s older than their mothers, but
They grovel at her feet.
They walk beside her rickshaw wheels—
None ever walk by mine;
And that’s because I’m seventeen
And she is forty-nine.
She rides with half a dozen men,
(She calls them “boys” and “mashers”)
I trot along the Mall alone;
My prettiest frocks and sashes
Don’t help to fill my programme-card,
And vainly I repine
From 10 to 2 A. M. Ah me!
Would I were forty-nine!
She calls me “darling,” “pet,” and “dear,”
And sweet “retiring maid.”
I’m always at the back, I know,
She puts me in the shade.
She introduces me to men,
“Cast” lovers I opine,
For sixty takes to seventeen,
Nineteen to forty-nine.
But even she must older grow,
And end her dancing days,
She can’t go on forever so
At concerts, balls and plays.
One ray of priceless hope I see
Before my footsteps shine;
Just think, that she’ll be eighty-one
When I am forty-nine.
LUCKY JIM
BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS
A FORGOTTEN STORY REWRITTEN FOR REINE DAVIES
Two jolly, boyish chums were we
For I loved Jim and Jim loved me,
We played together—went to school,
And learned the selfsame Golden Rule.
Jim kissed the girls and so did I;
But Jim got married on the sly.
The sweetest girl I ever knew
Her cheeks like roses wet with dew.
I kept my secret through the years
And tried to drown my love in tears.
Though oft I thought of suicide
The more I tried the less I died.
Refrain:
But every night I watched the sky
To see the moon and stars go by
And wondered how the angels fly
And thought of Jim—My lucky Jim—
And what I’d give to have her mine
That I might worship at her shrine,
But she was his, I’d not repine—
Oh, how I envied—envied him.
Some secret grief Jim sought to hide;
Grew weak and weaker till he died
And though I grieved that it was so,
I could not weep to see him go,
For joy, not sorrow, filled my bowl:
’Twas mine the widow to console.
Though Jim was dead, I was alive
To bring sweet honey to the hive.
I married her, and in my glee
Was happy as a honey-bee:
I called her “kitten”—In nine days
My eyes were opened to her ways.
Refrain:
Now every night I watch the sky
To see the moon and stars go by
And wonder how the angels fly
And think of Jim—my lucky Jim:
Deep lines of sorrow mar my face
As time goes on with lagging pace
Oh, how I long to take his place
Oh, how I envy—envy him.
—Copyright by _Forbes & Co._, Chicago, and used by kind permission of
author and publisher.
THE WHISTLING BOY
BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS
What music like the whistle of a well-contented boy,—
That rhythmic exhalation of an ever-present joy?
Though the fragmentary cadence of a plain, untutored art,
’Tis the melody of childhood, ’tis a psalm from out the heart.
You will never find a criminal behind an honest smile;
And the boy ne’er grows a villain who keeps whistling all the while,—
Though he whistle out of tune.
What cares he for fickle fortune,—what the fashion may bestow?
In his little barefoot kingdom royalty in rags may go.
With an apple in his pocket and another in his mouth,
Cares not how the wind is blowing, whether north or whether south;
For he has no crops a-growing, has no ships upon the sea;
And he keeps right on a-whistling, whate’er the tune may be,—
For he whistles out of tune.
’Tis the early smile of Summer creeping o’er the face of June,
Even though this crude musician many times is off the tune,
Till it bears the same resemblance to the melody that’s meant,
That his garments do to trousers little matter how they’re rent.
When he’s very patriotic then his tune is sure to be—
Although a bit rebellious—“My Country, ’Tis of Thee!”
Which he whistles out of tune:
(America.)
Such a vision of good nature in his cheery, smiling face;
Better clothes would check his freedom, rob him of his rustic grace;
So he feels a trifle awkward in his brand-new Sunday clothes,
While repeating to his teacher all the Scripture that he knows.
Out of Sunday school he rushes, takes his shoes off on the sly;
Says: “The angels all go barefoot in the sweeter by and by!”
Which he whistles out of tune:
(Sweet By and By.)
Sometimes whistling for his playmate; sometimes whistling for his dog,
On the quiet, in the schoolhouse, to perplex the pedagogue;
Sometimes whistling up his courage; often whistling just because.
In the South he whistles “Dixie” o’er and o’er, without a pause,
Till he’s out of breath completely, when it seems to be, perchance,
But a knickerbocker whistle, since it comes in little pants,—
For he whistles out of tune:
(Dixie.)
Should he hail from old New England you may safely bet your life
He can whittle out a whistle with his broken-bladed knife.
He will play his cornstalk fiddle, and his dog will never fail
To show appreciation, beating _tempo_ with his tail;
Then he whistles “Yankee Doodle” like the tunes you often hear
On the old farmhouse piano when the sister plays by ear,—
For he whistles out of tune:
(Yankee Doodle.)
There is many a weeping mother longing, morning, night, and noon,
For her boy to come back whistling just the fragment of a tune;
But he’s yonder entertaining all the angels unaware
With a melody so human they’re bound to keep him there;
For all that heavenly music nothing sounds to them so sweet
As that cheery, boyish whistle and the patter of his feet,—
For he whistles all in tune:
(Nearer, My God, to Thee.)
—Copyright by _Forbes & Co._, Chicago, and used by kind permission of
author and publisher.
THE LITTLE PEACH
BY EUGENE FIELD
A little peach in the orchard grew,—
A little peach of emerald hue;
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew,
It grew.
One day, passing that orchard through,
That little peach dawned on the view
Of Johnny Jones and his sister Sue—
Them two.
Up at that peach a club they threw—
Down from the stem on which it grew
Fell that peach of emerald hue.
Mon Dieu!
John took a bite and Sue a chew,
And then the trouble began to brew,—
Trouble the doctor couldn’t subdue.
Too true!
Under the turf where the daisies grew
They planted John and his sister Sue,
And their little souls to the angels flew,—
Boo hoo!
What of that peach of the emerald hue,
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew?
Ah, well, its mission on earth is through.
Adieu!
LITTLE BILLEE
BY W. M. THACKERAY
There were three sailors of Bristol city
Who took a boat and went to sea.
But first with beef and captain’s biscuits
And pickled pork they loaded she.
There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy,
And the youngest he was little Billee.
Now when they got as far as the Equator
They’d nothing left but one split pea.
Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
“I am extremely hungaree.”
To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy,
“We’ve nothing left, us must eat we.”
Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
“With one another we shouldn’t agree!
There’s little Bill, he’s young and tender,
We’re old and tough, so let’s eat he.
“Oh! Billy we’re going to kill and eat you,
So undo the button of your chemie.”
When Bill received this information
He used his pocket-handkerchie.
“First let me say my catechism,
Which my poor mammy taught me.”
“Make haste, make haste,” says guzzling Jimmy,
While Jack pulled off his snickersnee.
So Billy went up to the main-top gallant mast,
And down he fell, on his bended knee.
He scarce had come to the twelfth commandment
When up he jumps. “There’s land I see:
“Jerusalem and Madagascar,
And North and South Amerikee;
There’s the British flag a-riding at anchor,
With Admiral Napier, K. C. B.”
So when they got aboard of the Admiral’s
He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee;
But as for little Bill he made him
The Captain of a seventy-three.
A GALLANT THIRD PARTY
BY LITTELL MCCLUNG
A wooer, a maid and the moon,
And a starry night, you’ll allow,
Let’s say in August or June,
Though it hardly matters just now.
The man in the moon peered down
With a jealous eye on the pair,
And his face was dark with a frown,
For the girl was bewitchingly fair.
“Just one,” begged the lover. “Please, dear,
Don’t you see I love only you?
And nobody’s looking, don’t fear;
And you know that I’ll ever be true.”
But the maid saw the man in the moon,
And she hardly knew how to reply;
Maybe she might pretty soon;
Yet maybe she oughtn’t to try.
But the chap in the sky was a brick,
And he saw that he shouldn’t be seen,
So he gathered a cloud, black and thick,
And set it up quick as a screen.
A TRAGIC STORY
There lived a sage in days of yore,
And he a handsome pigtail wore;
But wondered much and sorrowed more
Because it hung behind him.
He mused upon this curious case,
And swore he’d change the pigtail’s place,
And have it hanging at his face,
Not dangling there behind him.
Says he, “The mystery I’ve found,
I’ll turn me round.” He turned him round;
But still it hung behind him.
Then round and round, and out and in,
All day the puzzled sage did spin;
In vain it mattered not a pin,
The pigtail hung behind him.
And right, and left, and round about,
And up, and down, and in and out,
He turned; but still the pigtail stout
Hung steadily behind him.
And though his efforts never slack,
And though he twist, and twirl, and tack,
Alas! still faithful to his back
The pigtail hangs behind him.
THE POOR LITTLE BIRDIES
BY A. J. WATERHOUSE
The poor little birdies that sleep in the trees,
Going rockaby, rockaby, lulled by the breeze;
The poor little birdies, they make me feel bad,
Oh, terribly, dreadfully, dismally sad,
For—think of it, little one; ponder and weep—
The birdies must stand when they sleep, when they sleep;
And their poor little legs—
I am sure it is so—
They ache, and they ache,
For they’re weary, you know.
And that is the reason that far in the night
You may hear them say “Dear-r-r!” if you listen just right,
For the poor little birdies must sleep on the bough,
And they want to lie down, but they do not know how.
Just think of it, darling; suppose you must stand
On those little brown legs, all so prettily planned;
Suppose you must stand when you wanted to sleep,
I am sure you would call for your mamma and weep,
And your poor little legs, they would cramp, I have guessed,
And your poor little knees, they would call for a rest;
And you’d cry, I am sure,
For so weary you’d be;
And you’d want to lie down,
But you couldn’t, you see.
And that is the reason why we should feel bad
For the poor little birdies, who ought to be glad;
For they want to lie down as they sleep on the bough;
They want to lie down, but they don’t know how.
—Copyright by _Harr Wagner Co._, San Francisco, and used by kind
permission.
THE FUNERAL AT PARADISE BAR
BY PAUL SHOUP
About four o’clock in the morning, Uncle Hank Witherspoon would climb
up on the box while the sun was tossing a few experimental shafts of
light across the canyon, and, watching with pride and satisfaction the
leaders dancing little dust clouds out of the stage road, would remark to
bystanders who turned up their coat collars and talked politics to keep
warm: “Some men are born hostlers; you see it by the way they lifts a
hoss’s foot; some _sabes_ how to ride, and most gin’r’lly they overruns
their boots’n their spurs is bright; and then there be others that are
fine at hoofin’ it and lambastin’ a pack train with a rawhide an’ one
hundred choice selections from two langidges; but as for me, my special
speci-ality is just plain drivin’ of a stage; a stage with four hosses;
just that and nothin’ more.” With that Uncle Hank would loosen his whip,
the leaders would rear like chargers on a monument, the wheel horses
would gather their feet under them—and down the road, pitching, swaying,
leaving behind them a wall of dust, would go the famous Mokelumne stage,
while half the population of Paradise Bar—they were early risers in
the camp—would stand with hands in pockets, staring after in silent
admiration. Uncle Hank was wiry and grizzled and storm-beaten; his
pointed beard stood out at a strong angle to his determined nose; his
eyes were of a mild and pleasant blue, but the fire in them awaited only
the flint. His laugh was merry, but he had a voice that would make the
most obstreperous horse remember that he was but as the dust of the earth
before this master.
Uncle Hank was at the helm of the transportation system of Paradise Bar;
he and his stage the connecting link between camp and civilization, the
latter represented by the county seat, Meadow Lark.
Uncle Hank, recognizing his importance in both communities, and
especially in Paradise Bar, was as gracious as an only hope—he was never
forlorn. He was an absolute dictator, it was true; he even decided the
locations of the passengers on the stage, and settled disputes as to
outside and inside. But he was autocratic wisely, and there was really
no reason why he should have been called upon to divide his sovereignty.
Yet, one sad day the Alladin Bonanza Company built a lumber road down
from Paradise Bar to Lone Pine. At Lone Pine the new road connected with
the line of the Gray Eagle Stage Company, which, as Uncle Hank put it,
flopped its way up from Meadow Lark. So, when the Gray Eagle extended its
tri-weekly service from Lone Pine to Paradise Bar, trouble outcropped on
Uncle Hank’s trail at once. George William Pike, of the Upper Basin, was
the driver to whom Uncle Hank referred as the dry goods clerk who handled
the ribbons for the opposition corporation.
George William surmised here and there and elsewhere, when he cornered
an audience, that the new route was two miles the shorter, and the
grade, calculating ups and downs, at least five per cent better. The
report reached Uncle Hank by air line, of course. He was silent a little
while, and then with elaborate courtesy thanked his informant, adding
that he was greatly obliged, not for the news itself, but because he had
for a long time been trying to recollect the name of the chap who left
Placerville after trying circumstances without advising his bondsmen.
It was indeed strange that a man caught stealing garments from a poor
washerwoman’s clothes line should be directing horses; remarkably odd,
when it was evident that he was cut out for a Chinaman and not a stage
driver. So saying, Uncle Hank awoke an echo unusually far off, making it
jump startled from the hillside at the crack of his whip, and drove on.
There was some difference of opinion in Paradise Bar concerning the
merits of the two lines; so long as they ran on different days and at
different hours, the question could not be satisfactorily settled, and
the Bright Light kept open an hour later in the evening to permit a
full discussion of the subject—thereby saving shutting up at all. The
real trouble began when the Gray Eagle line, perceiving that Uncle
Hank continued to carry the larger part of the business, borrowed his
schedule and started to operate upon it with their new yellow coach
with vermillion trimmings and four white horses, to say nothing of
George William Pike with his curled mustache, red necktie and stand-up
collar. He would have worn a silk hat too—the owners of the line were
aristocrats, with ideas and winter residences in Lunnon—but Morosin’
Jones who squirmed his shoulders and clasped his hands like an awkward
maid of fifteen when he talked, begged him to desist; he, Morosin’,
had such an unconquerable inclination to perforate high hats with his
forty-four wherever they might be. George William wisely desisted. Uncle
Hank’s stage had nothing but a faint recollection of paint, and was
written over with history recorded by bullet holes; the harness was apt
to be patched, and Nebuchadnezzar, the off leader, was wall-eyed, and
his partner, Moloch, sway-backed and short maned. Of the wheel horses,
one was a gray with hoofs that needed constant paring; the other had
the appearance of a whitewashed house at which mud had been flung with
startling effect. Of the two, Rome and Athens, no god could have decided
which was entitled to the palm of ugliness; but Uncle Hank, who loved
them all with the love a man may have for a homely dog, declared that the
wheel-horses were beauty spots in nature alongside the leaders.
It was a memorable morning on which the two stages left Paradise Bar
together. The yellow stage, with its nickel-plated harness and white
horses and tan-gloved driver, started three minutes first; and then, as
if gathering up his horses and the stage and the reins altogether, Uncle
Hank went down the line. It was a lively experience for the passengers;
bends they went around on two wheels, creeks they took at a leap,
bowlders and ruts only they avoided, and that because a scientist was
using his science. The grade of the other line must have been at that
time very good, for Uncle Hank had been only four minutes hitched in
front of the Elysium Hotel when the other stage drew up. It was true that
he picked his teeth as if he had been in to lunch, and casually enquired
of a passenger, so that George William might hear, if they had stopped
for dinner on the road, or did they expect to get it at the hotel;
whereat the passenger, jolted and jarred beyond good manners, roared:
“Stop for dinner! Great Scott! We stopped for nothing—bowlders, rivers,
landslides and precipices; if his Satanic Majesty was after us, he found
the worst trail he ever traveled—and I can’t imagine what other reason
there could be for such driving.”
The passenger went into the hotel. George William said something below
his breath, and Uncle Hank smiled. Alas for vanity! Ever it goes before
a stumble, a broken spring or a sick horse. The stages had different
schedules for the upward trip, but on the next journey downward disaster
overtook Uncle Hank. Seven of the nine hours’ ride were accomplished,
and the stage was at the mouth of the canyon. Here a point of rock
thrusts itself forward, marking a sharp turn in the road. Around this
turn galloped the horses, and twenty feet before him, sunning itself in
the road, Moloch saw an eleven-button rattler. He knew what that meant,
and sat down and slid with all four feet plowing the mountain road. They
stopped short of the snake, that had coiled and awaited their coming,
and then perceiving the enemy otherwise engaged, had wisely slipped into
the manzanitas by the roadside. Fifteen precious minutes were used in
repairing the disaster to the harness—and the race was lost. That night,
for the first time in the ten years in which he had been the oracle of
two communities, Uncle Hank, instead of telling stories and expounding
wisdom for the benefit of the unenlightened below, went up to his room
immediately after dinner and retired without lighting his candle. George
William put on a new pink necktie and his beloved silk hat, and went
about, stepping high like one of his white horses, but casting wary
glances abroad for the appearance of one Morosin’ Jones, who was coy and
fidgety and could perforate a dollar at one hundred feet.
In Paradise Bar every game was settled by the best two out of three.
Life was too feverish and too short to await three out of five, and it
was against the principles of the camp to leave any questions undecided.
Therefore, it was tacitly understood that the winner of the next race
would be the standard of comparison thereafter in matters pertaining
to travel. Other stage lines would be second-class, ranking just above
a mule train. There was another reason: Paradise Bar was exceedingly
fond of excitement, but it had no mind to risk its neck in stage racing
down the mountain-side forever and ever; precipices yawned too many
invitations. The personal feeling and the betting both heavily favored
Uncle Hank, both gratifying and troubling to him.
There is little doubt that in the third race, under fair conditions,
Uncle Hank would have won; he would either have won or gone over a
precipice. But Rome, who had never before been known to have anything
the matter with him save an abnormal appetite for grain, fell slightly
lame. All day before the race, Uncle Hank worried over this, all night
he tossed in his blankets, and was only partly relieved the next day
when Rome appeared again to be all right, and ate hay as if under the
impression that the sun was shining and there was plenty more being
made. The last two days had greatly changed Uncle Hank; he carried his
head so that his beard touched his breast; his hat was slouched low over
his eyes; he kept his hands in his pockets and spoke in monosyllables.
He ate little and had a far-away look in his blue eyes. He saw his fame
departing, his reputation collapsing, all that a man may build in this
life, whether he creates empires or digs post-holes, crumbling—the
reputation of “being onto his job.”
The next morning with the fear of that lameness in his heart, Uncle Hank
hitched up and drove down the main street. He saw the yellow stage also
ready. There was no evidence of lameness in Rome as he drove up to the
door of the express office, nor when the stage stopped at the Record
Nugget for the hotel passengers. Uncle Hank’s despondent face became more
cheerful; he looked older and grayer and even bent a little that morning,
but he climbed up on the box with his old-time energy. His courage and
spirit were never to be doubted; only that lameness in Rome worried him.
He gathered up the lines and loosened his whip; but the four did not go
with their accustomed dashing display. Instead there was confusion and
hesitation; in fifteen yards the slight lameness of the right wheel horse
was apparent, and Uncle Hank drew up. He dropped the lines, and for a
moment his face was in his hands.
The other stage had gone. Nothing could ever convince the public
satisfactorily, he thought, that after starting he had not given up the
race through fear. The limp was scarcely apparent. He perhaps would not
have noticed it for some miles had it not been for his haunting dread
and the false start. Yet he knew what it would mean before the level was
reached—a steep down grade and he would have to go walking into Meadow
Lark, a loser by an hour.
Uncle Hank, a broken old man, climbed down from the stage. “Take ’em,
George,” he said to the hostler. “There won’t be no stage down to-day.”
He said no more, but passed amid a dead silence along the road through
the population of Paradise Bar which had turned out to see the beginning
of the deciding race. Some guessed at the reason; and to all it became
apparent when the horses were taken back to the stable and carefully
examined. That day Uncle Hank did not appear, nor the next; So Bob Allen
went up to his cabin in the evening and, receiving no response to his
knocking, kicked open the door and went in. Uncle Hank lay in his bunk,
his face to the wall. To Bob’s expressions of sympathy and encouraging
remarks, he made no reply; they were to him as the expressions engraved
on tombstones, and but added bitterness now. To his arguments, Uncle
Hank vouchsafed single words in return, and never turned his face from
the wall. From sympathy to argument, from argument he drifted into
bulldozing; alluded to Uncle Hank as a man afraid of things, among which
he specified a large number in language that I will not reproduce; and
when three connected words was the most he could get out of Uncle Hank
even by this, Bob knew the case was desperate, and retired, defeated.
The friends of Uncle Hank, the entire population of Paradise Bar, gravely
discussed the situation. It was unanimously decided that the yellow stage
should thereafter stop outside of the camp limits, and Morosin’ Jones
publicly announced, his shoulders working up and down most nervously,
that George William would immediately cease from wearing stand-up collars
and red neckties; he would come into camp with a slouch hat, a flannel
shirt and teamster’s warranted-to-wear gloves—or it was quite likely he
would never go out again. This statement met with the silent approval of
the entire assemblage; and George William, hearing of it, puzzled and
bewildered, wisely refrained from coming into the camp limits at all, but
remained by the stage. He explained in Meadow Lark that Paradise Bar had
gone crazy; and a cheerful miner from that camp acquiesced, but added
that some of the lunatics were not yet corralled, but still straying
about; and said it looking so significantly at George William that the
latter went home and hunted up a flannel shirt at once.
The next morning a committee waited on Uncle Hank, prepared with
arguments that would show him the error of broken-heartedness—the easiest
thing in the world to cure if its victims would but live to tell us of
it. Uncle Hank still lay with his face to the wall, and in a little while
the news was abroad in the camp that Uncle Hank, still with his face to
the wall, had resolutely died. It was a gray day in Paradise Bar; the
melodion in the Red Light was hushed; friends nodded instead of speaking
as they passed by; the camp began to realize what it had lost. It was
determined, as a last mark of the camp’s esteem for Uncle Hank, to make
the journey to the place of the final tie-up simple but impressive. No
formal meeting was held; the boys just gathered together and acted on a
common idea. The whole camp would be in the procession, and they would
go down to Meadow Lark over the old familiar road. Uncle Hank’s stage
carrying the old stage-driver, would be at the head, of course; then
there was an awkward pause. More than one felt that it would add to the
dignity of the occasion to have two stages, but finally, when Major
Wilkerson arose and suggested that the Gray Eagle stage, carrying leading
citizens, be placed next, there was a murmur of dissent. Then Bob Allen
arose in his place and made the only known speech of his life:
“Friends, you are on the wrong trail and will hit a blind canyon,
certain. Of course we should have the other stage, and Pike to drive
it. Uncle Hank wasn’t the kind of a man to carry jealousy with him into
camp. ’Twasn’t being beat by Pike that broke Uncle Hank’s heart; it was
partly p’haps being beat at all, and partly, to my way of thinkin’,
because Paradise Bar didn’t stand behind him. That was the main reason,
gentlemen; he just died of pure lonesomeness. When this yaller ve-hicle
comes into camp, does we say to it: ‘You’re purty and you’re new, and
probably your springs is all right and maybe your road; but you might
jest as well pass on. Do you observe this old stage with its paint
wore off and its bullet holes? Do you see that it’s down a little on
one side and some of the spokes is new and some are old? Do you know
that these four old hosses have been whoopin’ her up for Paradise Bar
and for nothin’ else these ten years—and a sunshiny day and one chuck
full of snow and sleet was all the same to them? Be you aware that this
is our Uncle Hank, and that he has been workin’ our lead for us these
fifteen years, and never lost a dollar or a pound of stuff or spilled
a passenger, or asked one of the boys to hoof it because he hadn’t no
_dinero_? Those bullet holes—men behind masks made ’em, but Uncle Hank
never tightened a ribbon for the whole caboodle. The paint’s been knocked
off that stage in our service, and it’s ours. Therefore, though you be
yaller and handsome, with consid’ble silver plate, we can’t back you
against our own flesh and blood. And that settles it.’ Did we talk that
way, boys? No, we jest stood off and gambled on the result as if Uncle
Hank was a travelin’ stranger ’stead of the best friend we had. We stood
off impartial like and invited the white hoss outfit to git in and win
if it could. And now, gentlemen, have we got the nerve to dynamite this
opposition stage line, when the whole gang of us ought to be blown sky
high?
“Uncle Hank wouldn’t have had it so. He didn’t cherish any ill feeling
pussonly against anybody; whatever he said was because they was takin’
away from him what he had worked all his life for. He wasn’t jealous of
George William, but of him as a stage driver, because we made him so.
Boys, he loved us and was mighty proud of our regard—and we didn’t show
it in the time of trial. And he’s gone over the great divide with tears
in his eyes, and we are to blame. Who among any of us poor fools has a
right to say that the other stage shouldn’t follow?”
Bob sat down amid absolute silence, wiping his face vigorously. Major
Wilkerson rose to his feet. “I renew my suggestion,” said he, “that we
have the Gray Eagle stage. I think you’ll all agree that Bob’s right.”
Morosin’ Jones rose from his stump, suffused with emotion. “In course
he’s right,” he said, huskily, “but the stage ou’t to be painted black.”
A murmur of assent greeted this speech.
* * * * *
The day was beautiful. The procession went slowly down the old stage
road, past Lime Point, through the Roaring River canyon, beyond up
Reddy’s grade, over the First Summit and then through Little Forest to
the watering-place at the head of the last canyon. Every stream, every
tree, every rock along the road was known to Uncle Hank. He was going
home over a familiar way. The pine trees, with their somber green, were
silent; the little streams that went frolicking from one side of a canyon
to another seemed subdued; it was spring, but the gray squirrels were
not barking in the tree-tops, and the quail seemed to pipe but faintly
through the underbrush. The lupines and the bluebells nodded along the
way; the chipmunks stood in the sunlight and stared curiously.
All would have gone well had not George William Pike been a man without
understanding—and such a man is beyond redemption. He did not appreciate
the spirit of the invitation to join in this last simple ceremony in
honor of Uncle Hank. He accepted it as an apology from Paradise Bar
and growled to himself because of the absurd request to paint the
coach black—which he would not have done except for an order from the
superintendent, who was a man of policy. A year could have been wasted
in explaining that the invitation was an expression of humility and of
atonement for the camp’s treatment of its own. So he came and wore his
silk hat and his red necktie, and Morosin’ Jones almost had a spasm in
restraining himself.
Down the mountain-side they went, slowly and decorously. Nothing eventful
happened until the mouth of the canyon was cleared, and then George
William became impatient. He could not understand the spirit of the
occasion. Meadow Lark and supper were a long way off, and the luncheon
at Half-Way House had been light. So he began making remarks over his
horses’ heads with the intention of hurrying up Gregg, who was driving
the old stage. “Well fitted for this kind of work, those horses, ain’t
they?” he said. “Seems curious they were ever put on the stage.” Gregg
said nothing, but tightened rein a bit. “Where will we stop for the
night?” asked George William presently, flicking the off leader’s ear
with his whip.
Gregg turned around angrily. “If you don’t like the way this thing is
bein’ done, you can cut and go on in town alone; but if you don’t keep
your mouth closed there’ll be trouble.”
“I don’t want to go into town alone,” rejoined George William pleasantly,
“but I reckon we’d go in better fashion if we was at the head of this
percession.”
“Maybe you’d better try it,” said Gregg, reddening, and thereupon George
William turned out his four white horses and his black stage, without
saying anything to his two passengers, and proceeded to go around. Gregg
gathered in the slack in his reins. “Go back!” he roared. But Pike,
swinging wide to the right to avoid the far-reaching whip, went on.
Nebuchadnezzar pricked up his ears. Rome looked inquiringly at Athens,
and Moloch snorted indignantly. Athens’ expression said very plainly:
“Are we at our time of life going to permit four drawing-room apologies
for horses and a new-fangled rattletrap to pass us on our own road?” The
negative response could be seen in the quiver that ran down each horse’s
back. The leaders gently secured their bits between their teeth. So
absorbed was Gregg in the strange actions of George William that he paid
little attention to his own horses.
Up and down the line behind him men were waving and gesticulating and
shouting. “Don’t let him pass you!” yelled Wilkerson. That instruction
ran up and down the line, clothed in a variety of picturesque and
forcible utterances. But no instruction was needed by the horses in
front of Gregg. They understood, and scarcely had the other stage turned
into the main road ahead when they at one jump broke from a walk into
a gallop. George William saw and gave his four the rein and the whip.
Glancing back, Gregg watched the whole procession change from a line
of decorous dignity to one of active excitement. Dust began to rise,
men on horseback passed men on mules; men in buckboards passed men
on lumber wagons. George William held the road, and with it a great
advantage. To pass him it would be necessary to go out among the rocks
and the sage-brush, and the white four were racing swiftly, rolling out
behind them a blinding cloud of dust. Gregg set his teeth, and spoke
encouragingly to his horses. George William turned and shouted back an
insult: “You needn’t hurry; we’ll tell them you’ll be there to-morrow.
’Tend to your new business; there is nothing in the other for you. We’re
going into town first.”
“Maybe,” said Gregg grimly—and loosened his whip. The four lifted
themselves together at its crack; in another half mile they were ready
to turn out to go around. Gregg watched for a place anxiously. Brush and
boulders seemed everywhere, but finally he chose a little sandy wash
along which ran the road for a way.
Turning out he went into the sand and lost ten yards. He heard George
William laugh sarcastically. But the old stage horses had been in sand
before, and had but one passenger besides their driver. In a little
while they were abreast the leaders, and here they stayed and could
gain no farther. For George William laid on the lash, and the road was
good. On they went, the one stage running smoothly on the hard road,
the other swaying, bounding, rocking, among the rocks and gullies. A
little while they ran thus, and then the road began to tell. Pike shouted
triumphantly. Gregg, with despair in his heart, watched with grief the
loss of inch after inch. “What can I do?” he groaned—and turning, he
found himself face to face with Uncle Hank. The reins dropped from his
nerveless hands, and his face went white.
“Give me a hand!” shouted Uncle Hank, and over the swinging door he
crawled on the seat—and Gregg perceived he was flesh and blood. The old
fire was in his eyes, he stood erect and loosened his whip with his left
hand easily as of yore. And then something else happened. The line behind
was scattered and strung out to perhaps a mile in length, but every eye
was on the racing coaches. They saw the familiar figure of the old stage
driver, saw him gather up the reins; saw and understood that he had
come back to life again, and up and down that line went a cheer such as
Paradise Bar will seldom hear again. Uncle Hank sent the whip waving over
the backs of his beloved. “Nebuchadnezzar! Moloch! Rome! Athens! Come!
No loafing now. This is our road, our stage—and our camp is shouting.
Don’t you hear the boys! Ten years together, you’n me. Whose dust have we
taken? Answer me! Good, Athens, good—steady, Rome, you blessed whirlwind.
Reach out, Neb—that’s it—reach. Easy, Moloch, easy; never mind the rocks.
Yo-ho! Yo-ho-o-o! In we go!”
At the first words of the master, the four lifted themselves as if
inspired. Then they stretched lowly and ran; ran because they knew as
only horses can know; ran as his voice ran, strong and straight. In
three minutes they turned in ahead of the white horses and the funeral
stage. The race was practically won. Uncle Hank with the hilarious Gregg
alongside, drove into Meadow Lark ten minutes ahead of all others—and
Meadow Lark in its astonishment almost stampeded. After a while the rest
of Paradise Bar arrived, two of its leading citizens, who had started out
in a certain black stage drawn by four horses, coming in on foot. They
were quite non-committal in their remarks, but it was inferred from a few
words dropped casually that, after the stage stopped, they lost some time
in chasing the driver back into the foothills; and it was observed that
they were quite gloomy over their failure to capture him.
“Oh, never mind,” said Morosin’ Jones, in an ecstasy of joy. “What’s the
good of cherishin’ animosity? Why, for all I care he kin wear that red
necktie now if he wants to”—then after a pause—“yes, and the silk hat,
too, if he’s bound to be a cabby.”
Uncle Hank was smiling and shaking hands with everybody and explaining
how the familiar motion of the stage had brought him out of his trance.
“I’m awful glad to have you here, boys; mighty glad to see you. The
hosses and me are proud. I’ll admit it. We oughter be. Ain’t Paradise Bar
with us, and didn’t we win two out of three, after all?”—From _The Black
Cat_, June, 1902, copyright by _Short Story Publishing Co._, and used by
their kind permission.
HUMOROUS DIALECT SELECTIONS IN POETRY
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
POPULARLY KNOWN AS THE HEATHEN CHINEE
TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870
BY BRET HARTE
Which I wish to remark—
And my language is plain—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
It was August the third,
And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.
Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was Euchre. The same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table,
With the smile that was childlike and bland.
Yet the cards they were stocked
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye’s sleeve:
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.
But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see—
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, “Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,”—
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game “he did not understand.”
In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers—that’s wax.
Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark,
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar—
Which the same I am free to maintain.
—Copyright by _Houghton Mifflin & Co._, Boston, and used by their kind
permission.
PARODY ON “THAT HEATHEN CHINEE”
[The following remarkable parody was written by the Reverend Father Wood,
Professor of English Literature at St. Ignatius College, San Francisco.
For the annual exercises of his class, a debate was to be held as to the
respective abilities of the various authors and poets studied during the
year. Each had his advocates and strenuous adherents. The final test
adopted was that each adherent should write out Bret Harte’s _Heathen
Chinee_ in the form his favorite author would have followed. These verses
are after the style of Samuel Lover, the Irish poet.]
Did ye hear of the haythen Ah Sin,
Maginn?
The bouldest of bould Chaneymin,
Maginn?
Oh. He was the bye
Who could play it on Nye
And strip him as aisy as sin,
To the skin.
Oh. ’Twas he was the gossoon to win.
It was euchre we’d play, me and Nye,
Me bye!
An’ the stakes was uproariously high,
Me bye!
Nye’s sleeves they was stocked,
An’ me feelin’s was shocked,
But never a whisper said I—
You know why!
For Bill is outrageously sly!
The game to the haythen was new,
Aboo!
He didn’t quite know what to do,
Aboo!
With the cyards in his hand
He smiled childlike and bland,
And asked us of questions a few,
Wirrastheu!
Which we answered as bad as we knew.
We tuk it the game was our own,
Ochone!
We’d pick him as cleane as a bone,
Ochone!
But the hands that he played
An’ the p’ints that he made,
Made me feel like a babby ungrown,
I must own!
An’ dull as I’d shwallowed a stone!
Nye wud give him a three or a four,
Asthore!
But niver a better cyard more.
Asthore!
Yet he’d dhrop down a king
Just the aisest thing,
An’ jokers an’ bowers galore
By the score!
You may lay he’d been there before!
He was happy as haythen cud be,
Machree!
His manner surprisingly free,
Machree!
But William looked sour
When he played the right bower
Which William had dealt out to me,
Do ye see!
For to euchre the haythen Chinee.
Then William got up in a stew,
Hurroo!
An’ shlated Ah Sin black and blue,
Hurroo!
An’ shuk out of his sleeve,
I’m not makin’ believe,
Of picture cyards quite a good few!
It is thrue—
This shtory I’m tellin’ to you.
We had danced to the haythen’s own tune.
Aroon!
Oh! It’s lucky we got out so soon,
Aroon!
He had twenty-four packs,
On his fingers was wax—
An’ this in Tim Casey’s saloon!
The ould coon!
How he played us that warm afternoon,
Aroon!
KENTUCKY PHILOSOPHY
BY HARRISON ROBERTSON
You Wi’yam, cum ’ere, suh, dis instunce. Wu’ dat you got under dat box?
I do’ want no foolin’—you hear me? Wut you say? Ain’t nu’h’n but _rocks_?
’Peahs ter me you’s owdashus p’ticler. S’posin’ dey’s uv a new kine.
I’ll des take a look at dem rocks. Hi yi! der you think dat I’s bline?
_I_ calls dat a plain water-million, you scamp, en I knows whah it
growed;
It come fum de Jimmerson cawn fiel’, dah on ter side er de road.
You stole it, you rascal—you stole it! I watched you fum down in de lot.
En time I gets th’ough wid you, nigger, you won’t eb’n be a grease spot!
_I’ll_ fix you. Mirandy! Mi_ran_dy! go cut me a hick’ry—make ’ase!
En cut me de toughes’ en keenes’ you c’n fine anywhah on de place.
I’ll larn you, Mr. Wi’yam Joe Vetters, ter steal en ter lie, you young
sinner,
Disgracin’ yo’ ole Christian mammy, en makin’ her leave cookin’ dinner!
Now ain’t you ashamed er yo’se’f, sur? I is. I’s ’shamed you’s my son!
En de holy accorjan angel he’s ’shamed er wut you has done;
En he’s tuk it down up yander in coal-black, blood-red letters—
“One water-million stoled by Wi’yam Josephus Vetters.”
En wut you s’posen Brer Bascom, yo’ teacher at Sunday school,
’Ud say ef he knowed how you’s broke de good Lawd’s Gol’n Rule?
Boy, whah’s de raisin’ I give you? Is you boun’ fuh ter be a black
villiun?
I’s s’prised dat a chile er yo’ mammy ’ud steal any man’s water-million.
En I’s now gwiner cut it right open, en you shain’t have nary bite,
Fuh a boy who’ll steal water-millions—en dat in de day’s broad light—
Ain’t—_Lawdy!_ its _green_! Mirandy! Mi-ran-dy! come on wi’ dat switch!
_Well_, stealin’ a g-r-e-e-n water-million! who ever yeered tell er des
sich?
Cain’t tell w’en dey’s ripe? W’y, you thump ’um, en we’n dey go pank dey
is green;
But w’en dey go _punk_, now you mine me, dey’s ripe—en dat’s des wut I
mean.
En nex’ time you hook water-millions—_you_ heered me, you ign’ant, you
hunk,
Ef you doan’ want a lickin’ all over, be sho dat dey allers go “punk!”
—_Harper’s Magazine._
OH, I DUNNO!
ANONYMOUS
Lindy’s hair’s all curly tangles, an’ her eyes es deep en’ gray,
En’ they allus seems er-dreamin’ en’ er-gazin’ far away,
When I ses, “Say, Lindy, darlin’, shall I stay, er shall I go?”
En’ she looks at me er-smilin’, en’ she ses, “Oh, I dunno!”
Now, she knows es I’m er-lovin’ her for years an’ years an’ years
But she keeps me hesitatin’ between my doubts an’ fears;
En’ I’m gettin’ pale and peaked, en’ et’s jes from frettin’ so
Ovur Lindy with her laughin’ an’ er-sayin’, “I dunno!”
T’other night we come frum meetin’ an’ I asks her fer a kiss,
En’ I tells her she’s so many that er few she’ll never miss;
En’ she looks up kinder shy-like, an’ she whispers sorter low,
“Jim, I’d ruther that you wouldn’t, but—er well—Oh, I dunno!”
Then I ses, “Now see here, Lindy, I’m er-wantin’ yer ter state
Ef yer thinks yer’ll ever love me, an’ if I had better wait,
Fer I’m tired of this fulein’, an’ I wants ter be yer beau,
An’ I’d like to hear yer sayin’ suthin’ else but I dunno!”
Then I puts my arm around her an’ I holds her close and tight,
En’ the stars away up yander seems er-winkin’ et th’ sight,
Es she murmurs sof’ an’ faintly, with the words er-comin’ slow,
“Jim, I never loved no other!” Then I ses, “Oh, I dunno!”
RORY O’MORE
BY SAMUEL LOVER
Young Rory O’More courted Kathleen Bawn,
He was bold as a hawk, she as soft as the dawn;
He wish’d in his heart pretty Kathleen to please,
And he thought the best way to do that was to tease.
“Now, Rory, be aisy,” sweet Kathleen would cry,
(Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye),
“With your tricks I don’t know, in troth, what I’m about;
Faith, you’ve teased till I’ve put on my cloak inside out.”
“Oh! Jewel,” says Rory, “that same is the way
You’ve thrated my heart for this many a day;
And ’tis plazed that I am, and why not, to be sure?
For ’tis all for good luck,” says bold Rory O’More.
“Indeed, then,” says Kathleen, “don’t think of the like,
For I half gave a promise to sootherin’ Mike;
The ground that I walk on he loves, I’ll be bound—”
“Faith,” says Rory, “I’d rather love you than the ground.”
“Now, Rory, I’ll cry if you don’t let me go;
Sure I drame ev’ry night that I’m hatin’ you so!”
“Oh,” says Rory, “that same I’m delighted to hear,
For drames always go by conthraries, my dear;
Oh! jewel, keep dramin’ that same till you die,
And bright mornin’ will give dirty night the black lie!
And ’tis plazed that I am, and why not, to be sure?
Since ’tis all for good luck,” says bold Rory O’More.
“Arrah, Kathleen, my darlint, you’ve tazed me enough,
Sure I’ve thrashed for your sake Dinny Grimes and Jim Duff;
And I’ve made myself drinkin’ your health quite a baste,
So I think after that, I may talk to the priest.”
Then Rory, the rogue, stole his arm ’round her neck,
So soft and so white, without freckle or speck,
And he looked in her eyes that were beaming with light,
And he kissed her sweet lips;—don’t you think he was right?
“Now, Rory, leave off, sir; you’ll hug me no more.
That’s eight times to-day you have kiss’d me before.”
“Then here goes another,” says he, “to make sure,
For there’s luck in odd numbers,” says Rory O’More.
HOWDY SONG
BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
It’s howdy, honey, when you laugh,
An’ howdy when you cry,
An’ all day long it’s howdy—
I never shall say good-by.
I’m monst’us peart myse’f, suh,
An’ hopin’ the same fer you,
An’ when I ketch my breff, suh,
I’ll ax you howdy-do!
It’s howdy, honey, when you sleep,
It’s howdy, when you cry;
Keep up, keep up the howdyin’;
Don’t never say good-by!
I’m middlin’ well myse’f, suh,
Which the same I hope fer you;
Ef you’ll let me ketch my breff, suh,
I’ll ax you howdy-do!
“IMPH-M”
ANONYMOUS
When I was a laddie lang syne at the schule,
The maister aye ca’d me a dunce an’ a fule;
For somehoo his words I could ne’er understand’,
Unless when he bawled, “Jamie, haud oot yer han’!”
Then I gloom’d and say, “Imph-m,”
I glunch’d, and say, “Imph-m,”
I wasna owre proud, but owre dour to say—A-y-e!
Ae day a queer word, as lang-nebbits’ himsel’,
He vow’d he would thrash me if I wadna spell,
Quo I, “Maister Quill,” wi’ a kin’ o’ swither,
“I’ll spell ye the word if ye’ll spell me anither;
Let’s hear ye spell Imph-m,
That common word Imph-m,
That auld Scotch word Imph-m, ye ken it means A-Y-E!”
Had ye seen hoo he glour’d, hoo he scratched his big pate,
An’ shouted, “Ye villain, get oot o’ my gate!
Get aff to your seat! yer the plague o’ the schule!
The de’il o’ me kens if yer maist rogue or fule!”
But I only said, Imph-m,
That pawkie word, Imph-m,
He couldna spell Imph-m, that stands for an A-y-e!
An’ when a brisk wooer, I courted my Jean—
O’ Avon’s braw lasses the pride an’ the queen—
When ’neath my gray pladdie, wi’ heart beatin’ fain,
I speired in a whisper if she’d be my ain,
She blushed an’ said, Imph-m,
That charming word, Imph-m,
A thousan’ times better an’ sweeter than A-y-e!
Just ae thing I wanted my bliss to complete—
Ae kiss frae her rosy mou’, couthie an’ sweet—
But a shake o’ her head was her only reply—
Of course, that said No, but I ken she meant A-y-e,
For her twa een said Imph-m,
Her red lips said, Imph-m,
Her hale face said Imph-m, an’ Imph-m means A-y-e!
GRADING THE STREET
BY MISTUR MALOONEY
’Twas mesilf thin as bot me a swate little lot,
Wid monies I digged for six years in the mines;
An’ I builded an’ plastered a duck o’ a cot,
Which Biddy soon kivird wid crapers and vines,
Wid a backyard and garding convanyent and neat,
Where the childer and pig could kape out o’ the street.
I warked wid the hod an’ had plinty to do,
An’ a stitch in my back ne’er minded at all;
Our childer was healthy and Biddy was true,
And I sung ’neath the load as I mounted the wall.
For I knew when at sundown my work was complete,
My supper was ready, all smoking and sweet.
’Twas down in a valley secure from the wind,
A sandhill a north and a sandhill a south;
I thought that dame nature to me was so kind
She opened her jaws an’ we lived in her mouth.
Biddy oft at the sand would objection and grete,
But I tould her ’twould stop whin they graded the street.
Bad luck to the day thin—one Saturday night
I came back from working two month and a week;
Och! sorry an inch o’ my cot was in sight,
’Twas kivered wid sand an’ all livil and sleek;
I thought that an earthquake had made the hills meet,
Till poor Biddy cried out, “They’ve graded the street!”
“Bad luck to their sowls, thin,” I cried in my hate;
“I’ll sue them for spoiling my cottage an’ land,”
Whin Biddy sobbed out, “Dear Pat, ye are late,
’Tis a bill agin us that I hould in my hand.”
In trouble I looked at the figgers complete,
And saw _four hundred dollars_ for grading the street!
Poor Biddy was faithful, an’ didn’t repine;
Her cousin the childer an’ her had took in,
’Til I could wid our lavings another house find;
Wid a few pots an’ kettles a new life begin;
But exparience had taught me a lesson I weet,
Ne’er to live in a valley beside o’ the street.
So I wint to the highest o’ hills I could find,
An’ rinted a place that commanded a view,
An’ got oursilves sittled so much to our mind,
I soon earned the monies, an’ paid for it, too;
’Twas not so convanyent, but still it was neat,
Tho’ my bones ached at night, as I toiled up the street.
The young uns grew healthy, the air was so good,
An’ Biddy her clothes dried in half o’ the time;
Fur to help me to pay for our vittals an’ food,
The poor girl by washing earned many a dime,
An’ she kept things so tidy, complaicint an’ sweet,
I nivir drudgid climin’ that hill o’ a street.
Thin I wint to the mines for six months it may be,
An’ wid goold in my pockit I hurried me back;
Whin I got to the hill, nary hill could I see;
’Twas gone, an’ some lumber obstructed my track—
I saw in an instant my ruin complete—
Och! faith and Saint Peter, _They’d graded the street_!
DOT GOOD FOR NODINGS DOG
BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS
You vant to buy my dog? Ah, vell,
Dere vasn’t much of him to sell.
His eye vas broke, his leg vas out,
Und ven you ask his pedigree,
Dot make her laugh come out o’ me—
It vas a madder, I be blamed,
About der vich he vas ashamed.
His breed vasn’t in der Catalogue,
He vas a good for nodings dog.
It vas a day I don’t forgot,
Mit rain und sleet und dings like dot,
Dis homely dog he comed along
Und sing me such a hungry song,
I said: “Come in und take a seat
Und have some scraps und tings to eat!”
I smile mit him, he smile mit me,
Und look like he vas glad to be,
Although not in der Catalogue,
But yust a good for nodings dog.
Each time I come around, you bet
He vag dot tail already yet;
Und show me plain from either end,
He always vant to be my friend.
No madder I say yes! or no!
Where’er I gone he bound to go.
Und ven he lost me, runs around
Und smells me out upon der ground,
Den yumps yust like he vas a frog—
Und not a good for nodings dog.
My Meenie vas a leedle tot,
Yust big enough to be like dot;
Und run about und have some play
Yust mit der dog, until von day
I call her, und she vasn’t dere;
I couldn’t find her anyvere;—
“Dot dog gone off,” my vife, she say,
“Und lead dot leedle girl avay:—
He vas a good for nodings dog,
Und vasn’t vorth der Catalogue!”
My leedle Meenie lost! Mine Got!
I never tink I cry like dot!
But ven I found dot leedle pet,
I cry me more as effer yet:—
Dot’s funny, ven a man feels glad
He cries, yust like ven he feel bad;
Der tears vas yust der same; oh, my,
But vat a difference in der cry!
Dere Meenie sat upon der log
Und pet dot good for nodings dog.
Und ven my senses all got clear,
I ask me: “Vot’s der matter here?”
Und looking vere my Meenie said,
Dere lay a great big vildcat dead!
“Dot dog he killed him,” said my vife,
“Und save dot leedle Meenie’s life!”
I never saw her eyes more vet,
Und vile I hug dot leedle pet
She hug dot good for nodings dog,
Vot vasn’t vorth der Catalogue!
You vant to buy dot dog? Ah, vell,
Nobody’s here who vants to sell.
My vife she say, “You couldn’t buy
Von look of kindness oud his eye!”
Und as for me—dere’s not for sale,
Not e’en der vaggin’ of his tail!
Und Meenie told you plendy quick,
“In all dis vorld you got your pick
Of dose vot’s in der Catalogue,
But not dot good for nodings dog.”
—Copyright by _Forbes & Co._, Chicago, and used by kind permission of
author and publisher.
SHE LIKED HIM RALE WEEL
ANONYMOUS
The Spring had brought out the green leaf on the trees,
An’ the flowers were unfolding their sweets tae the bees,
When Jock says tae Jenny, “Come, Jenny, agree,
An’ say the bit word that ye’ll marry me.”
She held doon her heid like a lily sae meek
An’ the blush o’ the rose fled awa’ frae her cheek.
But she said, “Gang awa’, man, your heid’s in a creel.”
She didna let on that she liked him rale weel—
Oh, she liked him rale weel,
Aye, she liked him rale weel,
But she didna let on that she liked him rale weel.
Then Jock says, “Oh, Jenny, for a twalmonth an’ mair,
Ye ha’e kept me just hangin’ twixt hope an’ despair,
But oh, Jenny, last night something whispered tae me
That I’d better lie doon at the dyke-side and dee.”
Tae keep Jock in life, she gave in tae be tied:
An’ soon they were booked, and three times they were cried.
Love danced in Jock’s heart, and hope joined the reel—
He was sure that his Jenny did like him rale weel—
Oh, she liked him rale weel,
Aye, she liked him rale weel,
But she never let on that she liked him rale weel.
When the wedding day cam’ tae the manse they did stap,
An’ there they got welcome frae Mr. Dunlap,
Wha chained them to love’s matrimonial stake,
Syne they took a dram an’ a mouthfu’ o’ cake,
Then the minister said, “Jock, be kind tae your Jenny,
Nae langer she’s tiead to the string o’ her minnie;
Noo, Jenny, will ye aye be couthie an’ leal?”
And she vowed that she would, for she liked him rale weel—
Aye, she liked him rale weel,
Oh, she liked him rale weel,
At last she owned up that she liked him rale weel.
S-H-H-H!
ANONYMOUS
My maw—she’s upstairs in bed,
An IT’S there wif her.
It’s all bundled up and red—
Can’t nobody stir;
Can’t nobody say a word
Since _It_ came to us.
Only thing ’at I have heard,
’Ceptin’ all _It’s_ fuss,
Is S-h-h-h!
That there nurse she shakes her head
When I come upstairs.
“S-h-h-h!” she sez—’at’s all she’s said
To me anywheres.
Doctor—he’s th’ man ’at brung
_It_ to us to stay—
He makes me put out my tongue,
’Nen says “S-h-h-h!”—’at way;
Just “S-h-h-h!”
I goed in to see my maw,
’Nen clumb on the bed.
Was she glad to see me? Pshaw!
“S-h-h-h!”—’at’s what she said.
’Nen _It_ blinked and tried to see—
’Nen I runned away
Out to my old apple tree,
Where no one could say
“S-h-h-h!”
’Nen I layed down on the ground
An’ say ’at I just wish
I wuz big. An’ there’s a sound—
’At old tree says “S-h-h-h!”
’Nen I cry an’ cry an’ cry
Till my paw he hears,
An’ comed there an’ wiped my eye
An’ mop the tears—
’Nen says “S-h-h-h!”
I’m goin’ to tell my maw ’at she
Don’t suit me one bit—
Why do they all say “S-h-h-h!” to me
An’ not say “S-h-h-h!” to IT?
A FEW WORDS FROM WILHELM
BY WALLACE IRWIN
Man vants put leedle hier pelow
Und vants dot leedle Dutch—
Der vishes vich I vish, I know,
Are nicht so fery much:
Choost Europt, Asia, Africa,
Der Vestern Hemishpere
Und a coaling-station in Japan—
Dot vill pe all dis year.
_Hi-lee, hi-lo, der winds dey plow_
_Choost like “Die Wacht am Rhein;”_
_Und vat iss mein pelongs to Me,_
_Und vat iss yours iss mein!_
Jah also, ven I vloat aroundt
Mitin mein royal yacht
I see so much vat iss nicht Dutch
Dot—ach, du lieber Gott!—
It gif me such a shtrange distress
I gannot undershtand
How volks gan lif in happiness
Mitout no Vaderland!
_Hi-lee, hi-lo, der winds dey plow_
_As I sail around apout_
_To gif der Nations good advice_
_Und sausages und kraut._
Each hour I shange mein uniform,
Put I never shange mein mindt,
Und efery day I make ein spooch
To penefit mankindt:
Race Soosancide, der Nation’s Pride,
Divorce and Public Sins—
I talk so much like Rosenfeldt
I dink ve must pe tvins!
_Hi-lee, hi-lo, der vinds dey plow_
_Der maxim Rule or Bust—_
_You gannot wreck our skyndicate_
_Ven Gott is in der Trust!_
Being ein kviet Noodral Power,
I know mein chob, you bet—
I pray for Beace, und hope for War
Und keep mein powder wet;
Put ven I’ve nodings else to do,
Put shtandt around und chat,
Den der Right Divine talks nonsense t’rough
Mein military hat.
_Hi-lee, hi-lo, der vinds dey plow_
_Und softly visper dis:_
_“Der Kaiser he iss more as yet_
_Und all iss right vat Iss!”_
AT GRANDMA’S
ANONYMOUS
I went to visit Grandma
One cold Thanksgiving day;
I shookt and freezed and chattered
All along the way.
Grandma was knitting stockings,
So I tried to knit;
I pulled the string the wrong way,
And unmade every bit.
Next day I tried to tackle
A piggy for a horse,
And tumbled in the pig-pen—
And wasn’t Grandma cross!
I’m sure it wasn’t my fault
That my new dress was white,
If mamma had made it pig-color
It wouldn’t have shown a mite.
My Grandma has a brick room
Filled up with pans of milk.
One day I took in pussy,
She’s just as soft as silk—
She’s a drefful funny pussy—
All along the shelf she ran,
And with her little nosey
Made blue holes in every pan.
My grandma’s dreffully stingy,
She drove us both away,
And said she’d half a mind
To send me home that day.
Sometimes this pussy’s naughty—
One time she catched a mouse;
She teased and scratched and bited it
All up and down the house.
I whipped her with the tater-masher
Every time she made a turn,
And got away poor mousey
And hid him in the churn.
Who ever knew that milk would drown?
I thought ’twas only rivers.
But when Grandma churned,
My mousey was drowned all to shivers.
I saw a tub of milk onct,
We have ours in a dish.
I thought ’twas good for nothing
So I’d try to fish.
I just got settled down there,
My legs were nearly freezed,
When Grandma came in screaming—
“O that girl is in my cheese.”
She jumped me out I tell you
Right on the cold stone floor,
And called my new boots dirty,
And locked the dairy door.
She gave the butter to the pigs,
And put me straight to bed.
And whipped poor pussy dreffully
Right on her little head.
I’s been drefully good to Grandma,
Not made a bit of muss.
But I’s going home to-morrow
Cause, cause Grandma says I must.
A CHILD’S ALMANAC
BY J. W. FOLEY
My mamma says ’at w’en it rains
’Eyre washin’ Heaven’s window-panes,
An’ careless angels ’ist do fill
’Eir pails too full an’ ’atway spill
Some water down on us. ’At’s w’y
It rains some days w’en maybe I
Would like to play. An’ ’en she says
It’s ’ist ’em angels’ carelessness
’At makes ’em raindrops fall ’at way
At picnics an’ on circus day.
My mamma says ’at w’en it snows
’Eyre angels pickin’ geese, she knows,
An’ ’stead o’ usin’ ’em t’ stuff
’Eir pillow-cases, ’ey ’ist puff
An’ blow an’ don’t clear up ’eir muss
Till all ’em feathers fall on us.
An’ she says ’ey ’ist pick ’atway
Cuz ’ey want geese f’ Tristmas day.
An’ ’at’s w’y ’eres e’ mostes’ snow
Right close t’ Tristmas time, you know.
My mamma says w’en e’ wind ’ist roars
An’ blows, ’at’s w’en e’ angel snores,
But w’en it lightnings, she says, w’y
’Eyre scratchin’ matches on the sky,
An’ w’en it rumbles ’bove our heads
’Ey’re movin’ furniture an’ beds
Up ’ere, an’ cleanin’ house, an’ shakes
’Eir moth-balls out an’ ’at’s w’at makes
It hail. An’ weather, she ’ist ’clares
Is ’ist w’at angels does upstairs.
DOT LONG HANDLED DIPPER
BY C. F. ADAMS
Der poet may sing of “Der Oldt Oaken Pooket,”
Und in schweetest langvich its virtues may tell,
Und how, ven a poy, he mit eggsdasy dook it,
Vhen dripping mit coolness it rose from der well:
I don’t take some stock in dot manner of drinking,
It vas too much like hosses and cattle, I dink,
Dher vas more sadisfaction in my way of drinking
Mit dot long-handled dipper that hangs py der sink.
“How schweet vrom der green mossy brim to receive it—”
Dot would sound pooty good, eef it only vas true,
Der water schbills ofer, you petter believe it,
Und run down your schleeve und schlop indo your shoe:
Den down on your nose comes dot oldt iron handle,
Und make your eyes water so quick as a wink!
I dells you dot bookit don’t hold by a candle
To dot long-handled dipper dot hangs py der sink.
How nice it musd be in der cold vinter vedder,
Vhen it settles right down to a cold, freezin’ rain,
To haf dot rope coom oup so light as a feather
Und find dat der bookit vas broke off der chain!
Den down in der well you go off a-fishing,
While into your back comes an oldt fashioned kink!
I bet you mine life all der time you vas vishing
For dot long-handled dipper dot hangs py der sink.
Dhen give oup der bookit at vonce to der horses,
Off mikrobes und tadpoles schust give dem their fill,
Gife me dat pure vater dot all der time courses
Droo dose pipes dot run from der schpring on der hill:
Und eef der goot dings of dis vorld I get rich in,
Und friends all around me dheir glasses schuld clink,
I still vill remember dot old country kitchen
Und dot long-handled dipper dot hangs py der sink.
DE FUST BANJO
BY IRWIN RUSSELL
Go ’way, fiddle! folks is tired o’ hearin’ you a-squawkin’,
Keep silence fur yo’ betters!—don’t you heah de banjo talkin’?
About the ’Possum’s tail she’s qwine to lecter—ladies, listen!—
About de ha’r whut isn’t dar, an’ why de ha’r is missin’:
“Dar’s gwine to be a’ oberflow,” said Noah, lookin’ solemn—
Fur Noah tuk the “Harald,” an’ he read the ribber column—
An’ so he sot his hands to wuk a-cl’arin’ timber-patches,
An’ ’lowed he’s gwine to build a boat to beat the steamah Natchez.
Ol’ Noah kep’ a-nailin’ an’ a-chippin’ an’ a-sawin’;
An’ all de wicked neighbors kep’ a-laughin’ an’ a-pshawin’;
But Noah didn’t min’ ’em, knowin’ whut wuz gwine to happen:
An’ forty days an’ forty nights de rain it kep’ a-drappin’.
Now Noah had done cotched a lot ob ebry sort o’ beas’es—
Ob all de shows a-trabbelin’, it beat ’em all to pieces!
He had a Morgan colt an’ sebral head o’ Jarsey cattle—
An’ druv ’em ’board de Ark as soon’s he heered de thunder rattle.
Den sech anoder fall ob rain! it comes so awful hebby,
De ribber riz immejitly, an’ busted troo de lebbee;
De people all wuz drownded out—’cep’ Noah an’ de critters,
An’ men he’d hired to work de boat—an’ one to mix de bitters.
De Ark she kep’ a-sailin’ an’ a-sailin’ an’ a-sailin’;
De lion got his dander up, an’ like to bruk de palin’;
De sarpints hissed; de painters yelled; till whut wid all de fussin’,
You c’u’dn’t hardly heah de mate a-bossin’ ’roun’ an’ cussin’.
Now Ham, de only nigger whut wuz runnin’ on de packet,
Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an’ c’u’dn’t stan’ de racket;
An’ so, fur to amuse he-se’f, he steamed some wood an’ bent it,
An’ soon he had a banjo made—de fust dat wuz invented.
He wet der ledder, stretched it on; made bridge an’ screws an’ aprin;
An’ fitted in a proper neck—’twuz berry long an’ tap’rin’;
He tuk some tin, an’ twisted him a thimble fur to ring it;
An’ den de mighty question riz: how wuz he gwine to string it?
De ’possum had as fine a tail as dis dat I’s a-singin’;
De ha’r so long an’ thick an’ strong,—des fit fur banjo-stringin’;
Dat nigger shaved ’em off as short as wash-day-dinner graces;
An’ sorted ob ’em by de size, f’om little E’s to basses.
He strung her, tuned her, struck a jig,—’twas “Nebber min’ de wedder,”
She soun’ like forty-lebben bands a-playin’ all togedder;
Some went to pattin’; some to dancin’; Noah called de figgers;
An’ Ham he sot an’ knocked de tune, de happiest ob niggers!
Now, sence dat time—it’s mighty strange—dere’s not de slightes’ showin’
Ob any ha’r at all upon de ’possum’s tail a-growin’;
An’ curious, too, dat nigger’s ways: his people nebber los’ ’em—
Fur whar you finds de nigger—dar’s de banjo an’ de ’possum!
THE MOO-COW-MOO
BY EDMUND VANCE COOKE
My pa held me up to the moo-cow-moo
So clost I could almost touch,
En I fed him a couple of times, or two,
En I wasn’t a ’fraid-cat—MUCH.
But if my papa goes into the house,
En mamma she goes in, too,
I just keep still, like a little mouse,
Fer the moo-cow-moo might Moo!
The moo-cow-moo’s got a tail like a rope
En it’s raveled down where it grows;
En it’s just like feeling a piece of soap
All over the moo-cow’s nose.
En the moo-cow-moo has lots of fun
Just swinging his tail about;
En he opens his mouth and then I run—
’Cause that’s where the moo comes out!
En the moo-cow-moo’s got deers on his head
En his eyes sticks out of their place,
En the nose of the moo-cow-moo is spread
All over the end of his face.
En his feet is nothing but finger-nails
En his mamma don’t keep ’em cut,
En he gives folks milk in water-pails
Ef he don’t keep his handles shut.
’Cause ef you er me pulls the handles, why
The moo-cow-moo says it hurts,
But the hired man he sits down clost by
En squirts en squirts en squirts!
ENCOURAGEMENT
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
Who dat knockin’ at de do’?
Why, Ike Johnson—yes, fu’ sho’!
Come in, Ike. I’s mighty glad
You come down. I t’ought you’s mad
At me ’bout de othah night,
An’ was stayin’ ’way fu’ spite.
Say, now, was you mad fu’ true
W’en I kin’ o’ laughed at you?
Speak up, Ike, an’ ’spress yo’se’f.
’Tain’t no use a-lookin’ sad,
An’ a-mekin’ out you’s mad;
Ef you’s gwine to be so glum,
Wondah why you evah come.
I don’t lak nobidy ’roun’
Dat jes’ shet dey mouf an’ frown—
Oh, now, man, don’t act a dunce!
Cain’t you talk? I tol’ you once,
Speak up, Ike, an’ ’spress yo’se’f.
Wha’d you come hyeah fu’ to-night?
Body’d t’ink yo’ haid ain’t right.
I’s done all dat I kin do—
Dressed perticler, jes’ fu’ you;
Reckon I’d a’ bettah wo’
My ol’ ragged calico.
Aftah all de pains I’s took,
Cain’t you tell me how I look?
Speak up, Ike, an’ ’spress yo’se’f.
—Copyright by _Dodd, Mead & Co._, and used by arrangement.
WHEN DE CO’N PONE’S HOT
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
Dey is times in life when Nature
Seems to slip a cog, an’ go
Jes’ a-rattlin’ down creation,
Lak an ocean’s overflow;
When do worl’ jes’ stahts a-spinnin’
Lak a picaninny’s top,
An’ yo’ cup o’ joy is brimmin’
’Twell it seems about to slop,
An’ you feel jes’ lak a racah,
Dat is trainin’ fu’ to trot—
When yo’ mammy says de blessin’
An’ de co’n pone’s hot.
When you set down at de table,
Kin’ o’ weary lak an’ sad,
An’ you’se jes’ a little tiahed
An’ purhaps a little mad;
How yo’ gloom tu’ns into gladness,
How yo’ joy drives out de doubt
When de oven do’ is opened,
An’ de smell comes po’in out;
Why de ’lectric light o’ Heaven
Seems to settle on de spot,
When yo’ mammy says de blessin’
An’ de co’n pone’s hot.
When de cabbage pot is steamin’
An’ de bacon’s good an’ fat,
When de chittlins is a sputter’n’
So’s to show you whah dey’s at;
Tek away yo’ sody biscuit,
Tek away yo’ cake an’ pie,
Fu’ de glory time is comin’,
An’ it’s ’proachin’ mighty nigh,
An’ you want to jump an’ hollah,
Dough you know you’d bettah not,
When yo’ mammy says de blessin’
An’ de co’n pone’s hot.
I have hyeahd o’ lots o’ sermons,
An’ I’ve hyeahd o’ lots o’ prayers,
An’ I’ve listened to some singin’
Dat has tuck me up de stairs
Of de Glory-Lan’ an’ set me
Jes’ below de Mastah’s tr’one,
An’ have lef’ my hea’t a-singin’
In a happy aftah tone;
But dem wu’ds so sweetly murmured
Seem to tech de softes’ spot,
When my mammy says de blessin’,
An’ de co’n pone’s hot.
—Copyright by _Dodd, Mead & Co._, New York, and used by arrangement.
THE COURTIN’
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
God makes sech nights, all white an’ still
Fur’z you can look or listen.
Moonshine an’ snow on field an’ hill,
All silence an’ all glisten.
Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown
An’ peeked in thru’ the winder,
An’ there sot Huldy all alone,
’Ith no one nigh to hender.
A fireplace filled the room’s one side
With a half a cord o’ wood in,—
There warn’t no stoves (tel comfort died)
To bake ye to a puddin’.
The wa’nut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her!
An’ leetle flames danced all about
The chiny on the dresser.
Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung,
An’ in amongst ’em rusted
The ole queen’s arm thet Gran’ the Young
Fetched back from Concord busted.
The very room, ’cause she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin’,
An’ she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez the apples she was peelin’.
’Twas kin’ o’ kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,
A dog-rose bloomin’ to a brook
Ain’t modester nor sweeter.
He was six foot o’ man, A-1,
Clean grit an’ human natur’;
None couldn’t quicker pitch a ton
Nor dror a furrer straighter.
He’d sparked it with full twenty gals,
He’d squired ’em, danced ’em, druv ’em,
Fust this one, an’ then thet, by spells,—
All is, he couldn’t love ’em.
But long o’ her his veins ’ould run
All crinky like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o’ sun
Ez a south slope in Ap’il.
She thought no v’ice had such a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;
My! when he made Ole Hundred ring,
She _knowed_ the Lord was nigher.
An’ she’d blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin’-bonnet
Felt somehow thru’ its crown a pair
O’ blue eyes sot upon it.
Thet night, I tell ye, she looked _some_!
She seemed to’ve got a new soul,
For she felt sartin’-sure he’s come,
Down to her very shoe-sole.
She heered a foot, an’ knowed it tu,
A-raspin’ on the scraper,—
All ways to once her feelin’s flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
He kin’ o’ l’itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o’ the sekle;
His heart kept goin’ pity-pat,
But hern went pity Zekle.
An’ yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An’ on her apples kep’ to work,
Parin’ away like murder.
“You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?”
“Wal ... no ... I come designin’”—
“To see my Ma? She’s sprinklin’ clo’es
Agin to-morrer’s i’nin’.”
To say why gals act so or so,
Or don’t, ’ould be presumin’;
Mebby to mean _yes_ an’ say _no_
Comes nateral to women.
He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on t’other,
An’ on which one he felt the wust
He couldn’t ha’ told ye nuther.
Says he, “I’d better call agin;”
Says she, “Think likely, Mister”;
Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
An’ ... Wal, he up an’ kist her.
When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips,
Huldy sot pale as ashes,
All kin’ o’ smily roun’ the lips
An’ teary roun’ the lashes.
For she was jes’ the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snowhid in Jenooary.
The blood clost roun’ her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin’,
Tell mother see how matters stood,
An’ gin ’em both her blessin’.
Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o’ Fundy,
An’ all I know is they was cried
In meetin’ come next Sunday.
A RAINY DAY
BY ELLYE HOWELL GLOVER
I simply cannot understand
Why grown-ups always say,
“Don’t spend your money, little boy;
Save for a rainy day.”
Once, when the circus was in town
I asked Bob for a quarter;
He said, “You’re so extravagant,
For shame; I think you’d oughter—
“Save all your pennies; after while
You’ll need them, silly baby;
For if you spend them all, you’ll go
Out to the poorhouse—maybe.”
And so I waited till next time
When it rained cats and dogs;
I took the big umbrella, and
Put on my oldest togs.
And when they stopped me with the words
I knew of course they’d say,
I hollered, “I must spend my dime,
Cause it’s a rainy day.”
SCHOOL’S COMMENCED
BY LEONARD G. NATTKEMPER
Well, I guess I’ll have to go—
For school’s commenced again, you know;
An’ now I’ll have to be polite,
An’ watch my words wif all my might.
I wish the school ’ud blow away,
Or teachers all were sick to-day;
For nen I’d be just what I am,
An’ play all day wif Jake an’ Sam.
I guess us boys ’ud ruther be
The pirates on a stormy sea,
That shoot wif guns an’ cut wif knives,
Than spend in school most all our lives.
I can’t see why Ma thinks ’at school
Is better place than swimmin’ pool;
Or that I’ll learn more in a book
Than from my pal, the flowin’ brook.
It may be so, but I don’t care,
I’d ruther be a-dreamin’ there
How fine it is to be like men,
An’ never go to school again.
My Ma an’ Pa both said that they
Would be so glad when I’m away;
An’ so, I guess I’ll have to go—
For school’s commenced again, you know.
UNDERSTAENDLICH
BY EDMUND VANCE COOKE
(ABRIDGED)
Dhe contrariest t’ing on dhe erd is men,
Aber wimmens arr twice so contrary again,
Andt I am twice so contrary as you,
Andt you arr as worse as dhe worst one too;
Now, ain’d dhat zo?
You like to haf hoonger by dinner, you say,
Aber vhy do you eadt, so dat hoonger go ’vay?
You like to be tired, so you schleep like a top,
Andt you like to go schleep, so dhat tired feeling shtop;
Now, ain’d dhat zo?
You like to haf sugar on sauer t’ings you eadt
Andt you like to haf sauer mit dhe t’ings vhat arr sweet,
You like to be cold when dhe vetter is hot;
Andt it is cold, ach, how varm you vould got!
Now, aindt dhat zo?
How you shdare at dhe man vhat can valk up dhe street
On his hands, yet you valk twice so goodt on your feet,
Vhat a long mind you haf, if I’m in your debt,
Budt if you arr in mine, O, how quick you forget!
Now, aindt dhat zo?
Are you single? You like to be married, of course.
Are you married? Most likely you like a divorse!
Andt if you vas get unmarried, why dhen
You go righd avay and got married again.
Now, ain’d dhat zo?
It is bedter to laugh; it is foolish to fight
Yoost because I am wrong and because you ain’d right,
It is better to laugh mit dhe vorld, up and down
From dhe sole of our headt to the foot of our crown;
Now, ain’d dhat zo?
Zo, dhen you laugh at me andt dhen I laugh at you,
Andt dhe more dhat you laugh vhy dhe more I laugh, too,
Andt ve laugh till ve cry! Vhen ve cry, aber dhen,
Ve will bot’ feel zo goot ve go laughing again!
Now, ain’d dhat zo?