Read at the celebration of the seventy-second anniversary of the
birthday of Joseph Steele, Dec. 13, 1884.
Dear friends and neighbors, one and all,
I'm pleased to meet you here to-day;
'Tis nice for neighbors thus to call,
In such a social way.
We meet to celebrate a day,
Which people seldom see;
Time flies so rapidly away
'Tis like a dream to me;
Since I, a lad with flaxen hair
First met our friend, so gray;
We both were free from thought and care,
But full of hope and play.
Well Joseph Steele, we may be glad
That we are here to-day,
Although it makes me somewhat sad
To think of friends away.
Of all our schoolboy friends but few
Alas! can now be found,
Not many but myself and you
Are still above the ground.
I count upon my fingers' ends
About the half, I know.
Of all acquaintances and friends
With whom we used to go;
To _Humphreys_ and _Montgomery_
To _Cochran_ and to _Dance_,
And some, who slip my memory,
That used to make us prance,
Whene'er we missed a lesson
Or placed a crooked pin
Just where some one would press on
Enough to drive it in.
O, it was fun alive, I vow,
To see that fellow bounce
And hear him howl and make a row
And threaten he would trounce
The boy that did the mischief,
But that boy was seldom found,
And so, he had to bear his grief
And nurse the unseen wound;
But time and rhyme can never tell
The half our funny pranks,
And that we ever learned to spell,
We ought to render thanks.
Poor Dance! I always pitied him
For he was just from college,
And never having learned to swim,
Was drowned with all his knowledge.
Of Cochran, I but little knew,
He was a stranger here,
'Twas always said he would get blue,
And acted very queer.
Montgomery I knew right well,
He was rather kind than cross,
He taught the willing how to spell,
And always would be boss.
He wrote a very pretty hand
And could command a school:
His appetite got the command,
And that he could not rule.
One day he took a heavy slug
Of something rather hot;
He took that something from a jug,
And shortly he was not.
Who "took" him, though, I never can
Nor need I ever say;
But when the Lord doth take a man,
'Tis seldom done that way.
Poor Humphreys was a sort of crank
(Folks said his learning made him mad,)
But this I know, he always drank,
And that will make the best man, bad.
Excuse this rather long digression,
My pen has carried me astray;
These schoolboy days make an impression
From which 'tis hard to get away.
Then let me turn, and return too,
For I have wandered from my text,--
Well, Mr. Steele, how do you do?
I hope you are not vexed.
'Tis pleasant in our riper years
To have our children come
And bring their children--little dears,
They make it seem like home.
An old man's children are his crown,
And you may well be proud
When from your throne you just look down
Upon this hopeful crowd.
But now my neighbors dear, adieu;
"The best of friends must part;"
I'll often kindly think of you,
And treasure each one in my heart;
And if we never meet again
On this poor frozen clod,
O! may we meet to part no more
Around the throne of God.