You’ve never heard Bill Sunday speak?
No more had I until last week.
Yes, every mother’s son
Was there—bar none,
And women folks—the kids all came
Just like it was a baseball game!
Up to the grove on Dobson’s Hill,
And there was Bill—
Thumpin’, jumpin’, hell-fire Bill
Right from his ranch to spill
Religion till we’d drunk our fill.
Well say,
Since Bill let loose that day
There’s not a kid ’round here for miles
But what can juggle more new styles
Of double-jointed, back-talk stuff
And compound cursin’ guff
Than they’d have picked up with their ears
In twenty years
From other folks. But to resume,
Bill started on the temperance boom!
Statistics? Gosh! Blood-curdlin’ tales—
He had ’em stacked ’round there in bales,
With starvin’ children, murdered wives,
And drunken males with guns and knives.
The way Bill talked you would have thought
Our Valley here had gone to pot
And ruin from the curse of drink.
But what I think
Is mostly wrong with this here place
Is just a simple case
Of scandal!
Why, drinkin’ doesn’t hold a candle
To all the dirty mess that’s stirred
With every slanderous word
That’s rolled along—and every time
It’s shoved a bit, it gathers slime.
When certain people get together
It ain’t the weather
Worries them! Not much! It’s who the heck
Deserves it hardest in the neck!
I’ve read somewhere how they could hear
A little whisper ringin’ clear
Across the dome
Of old St. Peter’s there in Rome.
Well, I have heard a whisper go
From Hillman’s ranch down there below
The base-line road, to Eric Lane’s
Then shoot across and hit MacGrain’s,
From where it kept on bouncin’ till
It struck the Hendricks on the hill,
Then glanced and hit our house kerzip,
Two days exactly on the trip!
Though whisperin’s good down there in Rome,
We’ve some acoustics here at home.
Accordin’ to Amanda Higgins,
Jim Gillan’s wild on Mrs. Wiggins;
That’s why Jim’s wife goes ’round so white
And frets her heart out day and night.
Accordin’ to Matilda Blink
“That teacher last year used to drink—
She roamed at will with Ruf MacGrore,
Who was immoral to the core;
That car Zeb Brinker bought for Blanche
Meant one more mortgage on their ranch,
While Hiram Tyler, he sets back
And drives the same old squeaky hack
And makes his wife and daughters face
Shame and disgrace—
Old Hiram who has laid away
Enough to pay
For twenty cars—
My stars!”
So runs the gospel link by link
Accordin’ to Matilda Blink.
Of course you can’t gainsay the claim
That some small flame
Of truth might be
Where gossip’s smoke blows ’round so free,
But oh the misery that’s begun
When each poor family skeleton
Is wakened from its peaceful trance
And made to dance
A shandigee
For all the blame community.
What’s wanted most around this place
Is supernatural grace.
If we could find
Some heavenly-antiseptic kind
Of moral mouth-wash that would take
A slanderous tongue and make
It CLEAN—and God knows there
Would have to be enough to spare
For all of us—both wives and men,
To take a gargle now and then—
If we could ever hope
To find that kind of dope,
Our little parson on the hill
As well as Bill,
Could save a precious pile
Of energy and rest a while.