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 Book 
 
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 NOV £5 ii. 
 LIBRARY. 
 
 '■******»*, 
 
 "THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE" AND 'LEVEN MORE POEMS 
 
 NEGHBORLY POEMS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 NEGHBORLY POEMS, 
 
 Including "the Old Swimmin'-Hole." 
 
 SKETCHES IN PROSE, 
 
 Including the Boss Girl. 
 
 AFTERWHILES: Dialect 
 
 And Other Poetry. 
 
 PIPES O'PAN: Five Sketches 
 
 And Fifty Poems. 
 
 RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD: Dialect 
 And Other Verses. 
 
 THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT: 
 
 A Fantastic Drama in Verse. 
 
 AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE: A Flat Quarto 
 Illustrated in Colors. 
 
 published by 
 THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO., INDIANAPOLIS. 
 
 IN ENGLAND- 
 
 OLD-FASHIONED ROSES: 
 
 Poems, Dialect and Various. 
 
 published by 
 LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., LONDON. 
 
"When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore." 
 
33 
 
 Post C 
 
 "THE OLDSWIMMIN'-HOLE 
 'LEVEN MORE POEMS 
 
 NEGHBORLY POEMS 
 
 ON FRIENDSHIP 
 
 GRIEF AND 
 
 FARM-LIFE 
 
 BENJ. F. JOHNSON, OF BOONE 
 
 [James Whitcomb Riley.] ) ^ ^ 3 
 
 Post C 
 
 NOV 
 
 *\o-' 
 
 1895 
 
 
 LIBRA* 
 
 THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS, IND 
 

 DEDICATION 
 
 TO 
 
 THE EVER-FAITHFUL, WHOLE-SOULED, HONEST-HEARTED 
 
 HOOSIER FRIENDS, IN COUNTRY AND IN TOWN, 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 
 IS GRATEFULLY AND LOVINGLY INSCRIBED. 
 
 By Troasf « 
 
 Copyrighted 1883 by J. W. Riley. 
 Copyrighted 1 891 by J. W. Riley. 
 

 PREFACE AND SUB-PREFACE. 
 
 As far back into boyhood as the writer's memory 
 may intelligently go, the "country poet" is most 
 pleasantly recalled. He was, and is, as common 
 as the "country fiddler," and as full of good old- 
 fashioned music. Not a master of melody, indeed, 
 but a poet, certainly — 
 
 "Who, through long days of labor, 
 
 And nights devoid of ease, 
 Still heard in his soul the music 
 
 Of wonderful melodies." 
 
 And it is simply the purpose of this series of dia- 
 lectic studies to reflect the real worth of this homely 
 child of nature, and to echo faithfully, if possible, 
 the faltering music of his song. 
 
 In adding to this series, as the writer has, for 
 many years, been urged to do, and answering as 
 steadfast a demand of Benj. F. Johnson's first and 
 oldest friends, it has been decided that this further 
 work of his be introduced to the reader of the 
 volume as was the old man's first work to the 
 reader of the newspaper of nearly ten years ago. 
 
 Directly, then, referring to the Indianapolis 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 Daily Journal — under whose management the 
 writer had for some time been employed, — from issue 
 of date June 17, 1882, under editorial caption of 
 "A Boone County Pastoral," this article is herewith 
 quoted : 
 
 Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone county, who considers the 
 Journal a "very valubul" newspaper, writes to inclose us an 
 original poem, desiring that we kindly accept it for publica- 
 tion, as "many neghbors and friends is astin' him to have the 
 same struck off." 
 
 Mr. Johnson thoughtfully informs us that he is "no edjucat- 
 ed man," but that he has, "from childhood up tel old enugh to 
 vote, alius wrote more er less poetry, as many of an albun in 
 the neghborhood can testify." Again, he says that he writes 
 "from the hart out;" and there is a touch of genuine pathos in 
 the frank avowal, "Thare is times when I write the tears rolls 
 down my cheeks." 
 
 In all sincerity, Mr. Johnson, we are glad to publish the 
 poem you send, and just as you have written it. That is its 
 greatest charm. Its very defects compose its excellence. You 
 need no better education than the one from which emanates 
 "The Old Swimmin'-Hole." It is real poetry, and all the 
 more tender and lovable for the unquestionable evidence it 
 bears of having been written "from the hart out. " The only 
 thing we find to — but hold! Let us first lay the poem before 
 the reader: 
 
 Here followed the poem, "The Old Swimmin'- 
 Hole," entire — the editorial comment ending as 
 follows : 
 
 The only thing now, Mr. Johnson— as we were about to 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 observe — the only thing we find to criticise, at all relative to 
 the poem, is your closing statement to the effect that "It was 
 wrote to go to the tune of 'The Captin with his Whiskers !' " 
 You should not have told us that, O Rare Ben. Johnson ! 
 
 A week later, in the Journal of date June 24th, 
 followed this additional mention of "Benj. F. 
 Johnson, of Boone : " 
 
 It is a pleasure for us to note that the publication of the 
 poem of "The Old Swimmin'-Hole," to which the Journal, 
 with just pride, referred last week, has proved almost as great 
 a pleasure to its author as to the hosts of delighted readers 
 who have written in its praise, or called to personally indoiise 
 our high opinion of its poetic value. We have just received 
 a letter from Mr. Johnson, the author, inclosing us another 
 lyrical performance, which in many features even surpasses the 
 originality and spirit of the former effort. Certainly the least 
 that can be said of it is that it stands a thorough proof of our 
 first assertion, that the author, though by no means a man of 
 learning and profound literary attainments, is none the less a 
 true poet and an artist. The letter, accompanying this later 
 amaranth of blooming wildwood verse, we publish in its entirety, 
 assured that Mr. Johnson's many admirers will be charmed, as 
 we have been, at the delicious glimpse he gives us of his in- 
 spiration, modes of study, home-life and surroundings. 
 
 "To the Editer of the Indanoplus Jurnal: 
 
 "Respected Sir — The paper is here, markm' the old swim- 
 min'-hole, my poetry which you seem to like so well. I joy 
 to see it in print, and I thank you, hart and voice, for speak- 
 in' of its merrits in the way in which you do. I am glad you 
 thought it was real poetry, as you said in your artikle. But I 
 make bold to ast you what was your idy in sayin' I had 
 
viii PREFA CE. 
 
 ortent of told you it went to the tune I spoke of in my last. 
 I felt highly flatered tel I got that fur. Was it because you 
 don't know the tune refered to in the letter ? Er wasent some 
 words spelt right er not ? Still ef you hadent of said somepin 
 aginst it Ide of thought you was makin' fun. As I said before 
 1 well know my own unedjucation, but I don't think that is 
 any reason the feelin's of the soul is stunted in theyr growth 
 however. 'Juge not less ye be juged,' says The Good Book, and 
 so say I , ef I thought you was makin' fun of the lines that I 
 wrote and which you done me the onner to have printed off in 
 sich fine style that I have read it over and over again in the 
 paper you sent, and I would like to have about three more ef 
 you can spare the same and state by mail what they will come 
 at. All nature was in tune day before yisterday when your 
 paper come to hand. It had ben a-raining hard fer some 
 days, but that morning opened up as clear as a whissel. No 
 clouds was in the sky, and the air was bammy with the warm 
 sunshine and the wet smell of the earth and the locus blossoms 
 and the flowrs and pennyroil and boneset. I got up, the 
 first one about the place, and went forth to the plesant fields. 
 I fed the stock with lavish hand and wortered them in merry 
 glee, they was no bird in all the land no happier than me. I 
 have jest wrote a verse of poetry in this letter; see ef you can 
 find it. I also send you a whole poem which was wrote off 
 the very day your paper come. I started it in the morning 
 I have so feebly tride to pictur to you and wound her up by 
 suppertime, besides doin' a fare day's work around the place. 
 Ef you print this one I think you will like it better than the 
 other. This aint a sad poem like the other was, but you will 
 find it full of careful thought. I pride myself on that. I also 
 send you 30 cents in stamps fer you to take your pay out of 
 fer the other papers I said, and also fer three more with 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 this in it ef you have it printed and oblige. Ef you don't 
 print this poem, keep the stamps and send me three more 
 papers with the other one in — makin' the sum totul of six (6) 
 papers altogether in full. Ever your true friend, 
 
 Benj. F. Johnson. 
 "N. B. — The tune of this one is The Bold Privateer." 
 
 Here followed the poem, " Thoughts Fer The 
 Discuraged Farmer/' — and here, too, fittingly ends 
 any comment but that which would appear trivial 
 and gratuitous. 
 
 Simply, in briefest conclusion, the hale, sound, 
 artless, lovable character of Benj. F. Johnson remains, 
 in the writer's mind, as from the first, far less a 
 fiction than a living, breathing, vigorous reality. — So 
 strong, indeed, has his personality been made mani- 
 fest, that many times, in visionary argument with the 
 sturdy old myth over certain changes from the 
 original forms of his productions, he has so incon- 
 tinently beaten down all suggestions as to a less 
 incongruous association of thoughts and words, to- 
 gether with protests against his many violations of 
 poetic method, harmony and grace, that nothing was 
 left the writer but to submit to what has always 
 seemed — and in truth still seems — a superior wisdom 
 
 of dictation. 
 
 J. W. R. 
 
 Indianapolis, jfuly i8gi. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PROEM— The Delights of our Childhood is soon past Away 
 
 The Old Swimmin'-Hole i 
 
 Thoughts fer the Discuraged Farmer .... 3 
 
 A Summer's Day 5 
 
 A Hymb of Faith 8 
 
 Worter-Melon Time 10 
 
 My Philosofy . 13 
 
 When the Frost is on the Punkin 16 
 
 On the Death of Little Mahala Ashcraft ... 18 
 
 The Mulberry Tree 20 
 
 To my old Neghbor, William Leachman ... 22 
 
 My Fiddle . . „ .26 
 
 The Clover 28 
 
 Us Farmers in the Country, as the Seasons go and Come . 31 
 
 Erasmus Wilson 33 
 
 My Ruthers . 38 
 
 OK^a Dead Babe 40 
 
 A Old Played-out Song 41 
 
 "Coon-dog Wess" 44 
 
 Perfesser John Clark Ridpath 50 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 A Tale of the Airly Days 53 
 
 "Mylo Jones's Wife" 55 
 
 On a Splendud Match 58 
 
 Old John Clevenger on Buckeyes 59 
 
 The Hoss 64 
 
 Ezra House 68 
 
 APen-Pictur' 71 
 
 Wet-weather Talk 75 
 
 Thoughts on a Pore Joke 78 
 
 A Mortul Prayer 79 
 
 The First Bluebird 81 
 
 Evagene Baker 82 
 
 On any Ordenary Man 85 
 
 Town and Country 86 
 
 Lines Writ fer Isaac Bradwell 88 
 
 Decoration Day on the Place 89 
 
 Dialect in Literature 95 
 
 Originally contributed to The Forum — reprinted here by permission 
 
'THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE" AND 'LEVEN MORE POEMS 
 
 NEGHBORLY POEMS 
 
THE DELIGHTS of our childhood is soon passed away, 
 
 And our gloryus youth it departs, — 
 And yit, dead and burried, they's blossoms of May 
 
 Ore theyr medderland graves in our harts. 
 So, friends of my barefooted days on the farm, 
 
 Whether trnant in city er not, 
 God prosper you same as He^s prosperin" 1 me, 
 
 Whilse your past haint despised er f ergot. 
 
 Oh ! they^s notkiiv ', at mom, thafs as grand unto me 
 
 As the glory s of Natchur so fare, — 
 With the Spring in the breeze, and the bloom in the trees, 
 
 And the htim of the bees ev'rywhare ! 
 The green hi the woods, and the birds in the boughs, 
 
 And the dew spangled over the fields ; 
 And the bah of the sheep and the bawl of the cows 
 
 And the call from the house to your meals ! 
 
 Then ho ! fer your brekfast ! and ho ! fer the toil 
 
 That waiteth alike man and beast ! 
 Oh! its soon with my team Pll be turnhi' tip soil, 
 
 Whilse the sun shoulders up in the East 
 Ore the tops of the ellums and beeches and oaks, 
 
 To smile his godspeed on the plow, 
 And the furry and seed, and the Man in his need, 
 
 And the joy of the swet of his brow ! 
 
THE OLD SWIMMIN'- HOLE AND 'LEVEN 
 MORE POEMS. 
 
 THE OLD SWIMMIN' -HOLE. 
 
 Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep 
 
 Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, 
 
 And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below 
 
 Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know 
 
 Before we could remember anything but the eyes 
 
 Of thp angels lookin' out as we left Paradise; 
 
 But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle, 
 
 And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole. 
 
 Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore, 
 When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore, 
 Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide 
 That gazed back at me so gay and glorified, 
 It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress 
 My shadder smilin' up at me with such tenderness. 
 But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll 
 From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole. 
 
 I 
 
THE OLD SWIMMIN'-HOLE. 
 
 Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days 
 When the hum-drum of school made so many run-a-ways, 
 How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane, 
 Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane 
 You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole 
 They was lots o' fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole. 
 But the lost joys is past ! Let your tears in sorrow roll 
 Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole. 
 
 Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall, 
 And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; 
 And it mottled the worter with amber and gold 
 Tel the glad lillies rocked in the ripples that rolled; 
 And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by 
 Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, 
 Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle 
 As it cut acrost some orchurd to'rds the old swimmin'-hole. 
 
 Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place, 
 The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face; 
 The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot 
 Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot. 
 And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be — 
 But never again will theyr shade shelter me ! 
 And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, 
 And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole. 
 
THOUGHTS PER DISCURAGED FARMER. 3 
 
 THOUGHTS FER THE DISCURAGED FARMER. 
 
 The summer winds is sniffin' round the bloomin' locus' trees; 
 And the clover in the pastur' is a big day fer the bees, 
 And they been a-swiggin honey, above board and on the sly, 
 Tel they stutter in theyrbuzzin' and stagger as they fly. 
 The flicker on the fence-rail 'pears to jest spit on his wings 
 And roll up his feathers, by the sassy way he sings; 
 And the hoss-fly is a-whettin'-up his forelegs fer biz, 
 And the off-mare is a-switchin' all of her tale they is. 
 
 You can hear the blackbirds jawin' as they f oiler up the plow — 
 Oh, theyr bound to git theyr brekfast, and theyr not a carin' 
 
 how; 
 So they quarrel in the furries, and they quarrel on the wing — 
 But theyr peaceabler in pot -pies than any other thing: 
 And its when I git my shotgun drawed up in stiddy rest, 
 She's as full of tribbelation as a yeller-jacket's nest; 
 And a few shots before dinner, when the sun's a-shinin' right, 
 Seems to kindo-sorto sharpen up a feller's appetite! 
 
 They's been a heap o' rain, but the sun's out to-day, 
 
 And the clouds of the wet spell is all cleared away, 
 
 And the woods is all the greener, and the grass is greener still; 
 
 It may rain again to-morry, but I don't think it will. 
 
4 THOUGHTS FER DISCURAGED FARMER. 
 
 Some says the crops is ruined, and the corn's drownded out, 
 And propha-sy the wheat will be a failure, without doubt; 
 But the kind Providence that has never failed us yet, 
 Will be on hands onc't more at the 'leventh hour, I bet ! 
 
 Does the medder-lark complane, as he swims high and dry 
 Through the waves of the wind and the blue of the sky? 
 Does the quail set up and whissel in a disappinted way, 
 Er hang his head in silunce, and sorrow all the day? 
 Is the chipmuck's health a-failin' ? Does he walk, er does he run? 
 Don't the buzzards ooze around up thare jest like they've 
 
 alius done? 
 Is they anything the matter with the rooster's lungs er voice? 
 Ort a mortul be complainin' when dumb animals rejoice? 
 
 Then let us, one and all, be contented with our lot; 
 
 The June is here this morning, and the sun is shining hot. 
 
 Oh ! let us fill our harts up with the glory of the day, 
 
 And banish ev'ry doubt and care and sorrow fur away! 
 
 Whatever be our station, with Providence fer guide, 
 
 Sich fine circumstances ort to make us satisfied; 
 
 Fer the world is full of roses, and the roses full of dew, 
 
 And the dew is full of heavenly love that drips fer me and you. 
 
A SUMMER'S DAY. 
 
 A SUMMER'S DAY. 
 
 The Summer's put the idy in 
 My head that I'm a boy again; 
 
 And all around s so bright and gay 
 
 I want to put my team away, 
 
 And jest git out whare I can lay 
 
 And soak my hide full of the day ! 
 But work is work, and must be done — 
 Yit, as I work, I have my fun, 
 Jest fancyin' these furries here 
 Is childhood's paths onc't more so dear : — 
 And so I walk through medder-lands, 
 
 And country lanes, and swampy trails 
 Whare long bullrushes bresh my hands; 
 
 And, tilted on the ridered rails 
 
 Of deadnin' fences, "Old Bob White" 
 Whissels his name in high delight, 
 And whirrs away. I wunder still, 
 Whichever way a boy's feet will — 
 Whare trees has fell, with tangled tops 
 
 Whare dead leaves shakes, I stop fer breth, 
 Heerm' the acorn as it drops — 
 
 H'istin' my chin up still as deth, 
 And watchin' clos't, with upturned eyes, 
 The tree whare Mr. Squirrel tries 
 To hide hisse'f above the limb, 
 But lets his own tale tell on him. 
 
A SUMMER'S DAY. 
 
 I wunder on in deeper glooms — 
 Git hungry, hearin' female cries 
 
 From old farm-houses, whare perfumes 
 Of harvest dinners seems to rise 
 
 And ta'nt a feller, hart and brane, 
 
 With memories he can't explain. 
 
 I wunder through the underbresh, 
 
 Whare pig-tracks, pintin' to'rds the crick 
 
 Is picked and printed in the fresh 
 
 Black bottom-lands, like wimmern pick 
 
 Theyr pie-crusts with a fork, some way, 
 
 When bakin' fer camp-meetin' day. 
 
 I wunder on and on and on, 
 
 Tel my gray hair and beard is gone, 
 
 And ev'ry wrinkle on my brow 
 
 Is rubbed clean out and shaddered now 
 
 With curls as brown and fare and fine 
 
 As tenderls of the wild grape-vine 
 
 That ust to climb the highest tree 
 
 To keep the ripest ones fer me. 
 
 I wunder still, and here I am 
 
 Wadin' the ford below the dam — 
 
 The worter chucklin' round my knee 
 
 At hornet-welt and bramble-scratch, 
 And me a-slippin' 'crost to see 
 
A SUMMER'S DAY. 
 
 Ef Tyner's plums is ripe, and size 
 The old man's wortermelon-patch, 
 
 With juicy mouth and drouthy eyes. 
 Then, after sich a day of mirth 
 And happiness as worlds is wurth — 
 
 So tired that heaven seems nigh about, — 
 The sweetest tiredness on earth 
 
 Is to git home and flatten out — 
 So tired you can't lay flat enugh, 
 And sort o' wish that you could spred 
 Out like molasses on the bed, 
 And jest drip off the aidges in 
 The dreams that never comes again. 
 
A HYMB OF FAITH. 
 
 A HYMB OF FAITH. 
 
 O, thou that doth all things devise 
 
 And fashon fer the best, 
 He'p us who sees with mortul eyes 
 
 To overlook the rest. 
 
 They's times, of course, we grope in doubt, 
 
 And in afflictions sore; 
 So knock the louder, Lord, without, 
 
 And we'll unlock the door. 
 
 Make us to feel, when times looks bad 
 
 And tears in pitty melts, 
 Thou wast the only he'p we had 
 
 When they was nothin' else. 
 
 Death comes alike to ev'ry man 
 That ever was borned on earth; 
 
 Then let us do the best we can 
 To live fer all life's wurth. 
 
 Ef storms and tempusts dred to see 
 
 Makes black the heavens ore, 
 They done the same in Galilee 
 
 Two thousand years before. 
 
 But after all, the golden sun 
 Poured out its floods on them 
 
 That watched and waited fer the One 
 Then borned in Bethlyham. 
 
A HYMB OF FAITH, 
 
 Also, the star of holy writ 
 
 Made noonday of the night, 
 Whilse other stars that looked at it 
 
 Was envious with delight. 
 
 The sages then in wurship bowed, 
 
 From ev'ry clime so fare; 
 O, sinner, think of that glad crowd 
 
 That congergated thare! 
 
 They was content to fall in ranks 
 With One that knowed the way 
 
 From good old Jurden's stormy banks 
 Clean up to Jedgmunt Day. 
 
 No matter, then, how all is mixed 
 
 In our near-sighted eyes, 
 All things is fer the best, and fixed 
 
 Out straight in Paradise. 
 
 Then take things as God sends 'em here, 
 
 And, ef we live er die, 
 Be more and more contenteder, 
 
 Without a-astin' why. 
 
 O, thou that doth all things devise 
 
 And fashon fer the best, 
 He'p us who sees with mortul eyes. 
 
 To overlook the rest. 
 
IO WORTER-MELON TIME. 
 
 WORTER-MELON TIME. 
 
 Old worter-melon time is a-comin' round again, 
 And they ain't no man a-livin' any tickleder'n me, 
 
 Fer the way I hanker after worter-melons is a sin — 
 
 Which is the why and wharefore, as you can plainly see. 
 
 Oh! it's in the sandy soil worter-melons does the "best, 
 
 And its thare they'll lay and waller in the sunshine and the 
 dew 
 
 Till they wear all the green streaks clean off of theyr breast; 
 And you bet I ain't a-nndin' any fault with them; air you? 
 
 They ain't no better thing in the vegetable line; 
 
 And they don't need much 'tendin', as ev'ry farmer knows; 
 And when theyr ripe and ready fer to pluck from the vine, 
 
 I want to say to you theyr the best fruit that grows. 
 
 It's some likes the yeller-core, and some likes the red, 
 And it's some says "The little Californy" is the best; 
 
 But the sweetest slice of all I ever wedged in my head, 
 Is the old "Edingburg Mounting-sprout," of the west. 
 
 You don't want no punkins nigh your worter-melon vines — 
 'Cause, some-way-another, they'll spile your melons, shore; — 
 
 I've seed 'em taste like punkins, from the core to the rines, 
 Which may be a fact you have heered of before. 
 
WORTER-MELON TIME. n 
 
 But your melons that's raised right and 'tended to with care, 
 
 You can walk around amongst 'em with a parent's pride 
 
 and joy, 
 And thump 'em on the heads with as fatherly a air 
 
 As ef each one of them was your little girl er boy. 
 
 I joy in my hart jest to hear that rippin' sound 
 
 When you split one down the back and jolt the halves in 
 
 two, 
 
 And the friends you love the best is gethered all around — 
 
 And you says unto your sweethart, "Oh here's the core fer 
 
 you 
 
 p> 
 
 And I like to slice 'em up in big pieces fer 'em all, 
 Espeshally the childern, and watch theyr high delight 
 
 As one by one the rines with theyr pink notches falls, 
 
 And they holler fer some more, with unquenched appetite. 
 
 Boys takes to it natchurl, and I like to see 'em eat — 
 
 A slice of worter-melon's like a frenchharp in theyr hands, 
 
 And when they "saw" it through theyr mouth sich music can't 
 be beat — 
 'Cause it's music both the sperit and the stummick under- 
 stands. 
 
 Oh, they's moreinworter-melons than the purty-colored meat, 
 And the overflowin' sweetness of the worter squshed be- 
 twixt 
 
12 WORTER-MELON TIME. 
 
 The np'ard and the down'ard motions of a feller's teeth, 
 And it's the taste of ripe old age and juicy childhood 
 mixed. 
 
 Fer I never taste a melon but my thoughts flies away 
 To the summertime of youth; and again I see the dawn, 
 
 And the fadin' afternoon of the long summer day, 
 
 And the dusk and dew a-fallin', and the night a-comin' on. 
 
 And thare's the corn around us, and the lispin' leaves and 
 trees, 
 
 And the stars a-peekin' down on us as still as silver mice, 
 And us boys in the worter-melons on our hands and knees, 
 
 And the new-moon hangin' ore us like a yeller-cored slice. 
 
 Oh ! it's worter-melon time is a-comin' round again, 
 And they ain't no man a-livin' any tickleder'n me, 
 
 Fer the way I hanker after worter-melons is a sin — 
 
 Which is the why and wharefore, as you can plainly see. 
 
MY PHILOSOFY. 
 
 13 
 
 MY PHILOSOFY. 
 
 I aint, ner don't p'tend to be, 
 Much posted on philosofy; 
 But thare is times, when all alone, 
 I work out idees of my own. 
 And of these same thare is a few 
 I'd like to jest refer to you — 
 Pervidin' that you don't object 
 To listen clos't and rickollect. 
 
 I alius argy that a man 
 Who does about the best he can 
 Is plenty good enugh to suit 
 This lower mundane institute — 
 No matter ef his daily walk 
 Is subject fer his neghbor's talk, 
 And critic-minds of ev'ry whim 
 Jest all git up and go fer him ! 
 
 I knowed a feller onc't that had 
 The yeller-janders mighty bad, 
 And each and ev'ry friend he'd meet 
 Would stop and give him some receet 
 Fer cuorin' of 'em. But he'd say 
 He kind o' thought they'd go away 
 Without no medicin', and boast 
 That he'd git well without one doste. 
 
14 MY PHILOSOFY. 
 
 He kep' a yellerin' on — and they 
 Perdictin' that he"d die some day 
 Before he knowed it ! Tuck his bed, 
 The feller did, and lost his head, 
 And wundered in his mind a spell — 
 Then rallied, and, at last, got well; 
 But ev'ry friend that said he'd die 
 Went back on him eternally ! 
 
 Its natchurl enugh, I guess, 
 
 When some gits more and some gits less, 
 
 Fer them-uns on the slimmest side 
 
 To claim it ain't a fare divide; 
 
 And I've knowed some to lay and wait, 
 
 And git up soon, and set up late, 
 
 To ketch some feller they could hate 
 
 Fer goin' at a faster gait. 
 
 The signs is bad when folks commence 
 
 A findin' fault with Providence, 
 
 And balkin' 'cause the earth don't shake 
 
 At ev'ry prancin' step they take. 
 
 No man is great tel he can see 
 
 How less than little he would be 
 
 Ef stripped to self, and stark and bare 
 
 He hung his sign out anywhare. 
 
MY PHI LOS OF Y. 15 
 
 My doctern is to lay aside 
 
 Contensions, and be satisfied: 
 
 Jest do your best, and praise er blame 
 
 That follers that, counts jest the same. 
 
 I've alius noticed grate success 
 
 Is mixed with troubles, more er less, 
 
 And its the man who does the best 
 
 That gits more kicks than all the rest. 
 
16 WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUN KIN 
 
 WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN. 
 
 When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the 
 
 shock, 
 And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the strut tin' turkey- 
 cock, 
 And the clackin'of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens, 
 And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; 
 O its then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best, 
 With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, 
 As he leaves the house, bare-headed, and goes out to feed the 
 
 stock, 
 When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the 
 shock. 
 
 They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmosfere 
 When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here — 
 Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, 
 And the mumble of the hummin' -birds and buzzin' of the 
 
 bees; 
 But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the 
 
 haze 
 Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days 
 Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock — 
 When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. 
 
F0£- 
 
 
 
 c 
 3" 
 
 o 
 a 
 
 o 
 o 
 
WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUNKIN. if 
 
 The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn, 
 And the raspin of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn; 
 The stubble in the furries — kindo' lonesome-like, but still 
 A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; 
 The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; 
 The hosses in theyr stalls below — the clover overhead ! — 
 O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock, 
 When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock ! 
 
 Then your apples all is getherd, and the ones a feller keeps 
 Is poured around the celler-fioor in red and yeller heaps; 
 And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is 
 
 through 
 With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and 
 
 saussage, too; — 
 I don't know how to tell it — but ef sich a thing could be 
 As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on 
 
 me — 
 I'd want to 'commodate 'em — all the whole-indurin' flock, 
 When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock ! 
 
18 LITTLE MAHALA ASHCRAFT 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF LITTLE MAHALA ASHCRAFT. 
 
 "Little Haly! Little Haly!" cheeps the robin in the tree; 
 "Little Haly!" sighs the clover, "Little Haly!" moans the 
 
 bee; 
 "Little Haly! Little Haly!" calls the kill-deer at twilight; 
 And the katydids and crickets hollers "Haly" all the night. 
 
 The sunflowers and the hollyhawks droops over the garden 
 
 fence; 
 The old path down the gardenwalks still holds her footprints' 
 
 dents; 
 And the well-sweep's swingin' bucket seems to wait fer her to 
 
 come 
 And start it on its wortery errant down the old bee-gum. 
 
 The bee-hives all is quiet, and the little Jersey steer, 
 When any one comes nigh it, acts so lonesome like and queer; 
 And the little Banty chickens kind o' cutters faint and low, 
 Like the hand that now was feedin' 'em was one they didn't 
 know. 
 
LITTLE MAHAL A ASH CRAFT. 19 
 
 They's sorrow in the wavin' leaves of all the apple-trees; 
 And sorrow in the harvest -sheaves, and sorrow in the breeze; 
 And sorrow in the twitter of the swallers 'round the shed; 
 And all the song her red-bird sings is "Little Haly's dead !" 
 
 The medder 'pears to miss her, and the pathway through the 
 
 grass, 
 Whare the dewdrops ust to kiss her little bare feet as she 
 
 passed; 
 And the old pin in the gate-post seems to kindo-sorto' doubt 
 That Haly's little sunburnt hands'll ever pull it out. 
 
 Did her father er her mother ever love her more'n me, 
 Er her sisters er her brother prize her love more tendurly? 
 I question — and what answer? — only tears, and tears alone, 
 And ev'ry neghbor's eyes is full o' tear-drops as my own. 
 
 "Little Haly ! Little Haly !" cheeps the robin in the tree; 
 "Little Haly!" sighs the clover, "Little Haly !" moans the bee; 
 "Little Haly! Little Haly!" calls the kill-deer at twilight, 
 And the katydids and crickets hollers "Haly" all the night. 
 
2o THE MULBERRY TREE. 
 
 THE MULBERRY TREE. 
 
 O, its many's the scenes which is dear to my mind 
 
 As I think of my childhood so long left behind; 
 
 The home of my birth, with its old puncheon-floor, 
 
 And the bright morning-glorys that growed round the door; 
 
 The warped clab-board roof whare the rain it run off 
 
 Into streams of sweet dreams as I laid in the loft, 
 
 Countin' all of the joys that was dearest to me, 
 
 And a-thinkin' the most of the mulberry tree. 
 
 And to-day as I dream, with both eyes wide-awake, 
 I can see the old tree, and its limbs as they shake, 
 And the long purple berries that rained on the ground 
 Whare the pastur' was bald whare we trommpt it around. 
 And again, peekin' up through the thick leafy shade, 
 I can see the glad smiles of the friends when I strayed 
 With my little bare feet from my own mother's knee 
 To foller them off to the mulberry tree. 
 
 Leanin' up in the forks, I can see the old rail, 
 
 And the boy climbin' up it, claw, tooth, and toe-nail, 
 
 And in fancy can hear, as he spits on his hands, 
 
 The ring of his laugh and the rip of his pants. 
 
 But that rail led to glory, as certin and shore 
 
 As I'll never climb thare by that rout' any more — 
 
 What was all the green lauruls of Fame unto me, 
 
 With my brows in the boughs of the mulberry tree ! 
 
THE MULBERRY TREE. 21 
 
 Then its who can fergit the old mulberry tree 
 
 That he knowed in the days when his thoughts was as free 
 
 As the flutterin' wings of the birds that flew out 
 
 Of the tall wavin' tops as the boys come about? 
 
 O, a crowd of my memories, laughin' and gay, 
 
 Is a-climbin' the fence of that pastur' to-day, 
 
 And a-pantin' with joy, as us boys ust to be, 
 
 They go racin' acrost fer the mulberry tree. 
 
22 WILLIAM LEACHMAN. 
 
 TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN, 
 
 Fer forty year and better you have been a friend to me, 
 
 Through days of sore afflictions and dire adversity, 
 
 You alius had a kind word of counsul to impart, 
 
 Which was like a healin' 'intment to the sorrow of my hart. 
 
 When I burried my first womern, William Leachman, it was 
 
 you 
 Had the only consolation that I could listen to — 
 Fer I knowed you had gone through it and had rallied from 
 
 the blow, 
 And when you said I'd do the same, I knowed you'd ort to 
 
 know. 
 
 But that time I'll long remember; how I wundered here and 
 
 thare — 
 Through the settin'-room and kitchen, and out in the open 
 
 air — 
 And the snowfiakes whirlin', whirlin', and the fields a frozen 
 
 glare, 
 And the neghbors' sleds and wagons congergatin' ev'rywhare. 
 
 I turned my eyes to'rds heaven, but the sun was hid away; 
 I turned my eyes to'rds earth again, but all was cold and gray; 
 And the clock, like ice a-crackin', clickt the icy hours in 
 
 two — 
 And my eyes'd never thawed out ef it hadn't been fer you ! 
 
WILLIAM LEA CUM AN. 
 
 23 
 
 We set thare by the smoke-house — me and you out thare 
 
 alone — 
 Me a-thinkin' — you a-talkin' in a soothin' undertone — 
 You a-talkin' — me a-thinkin' of the summers long ago, 
 And a-writin' "Marthy— Marthy" with my ringer in the snow! 
 
 William Leachman, I can see you jest as plane as I could then; 
 And your hand is on my shoulder, and you rouse me up again; 
 And I see the tears a-drippin' from your own eyes, as you say: 
 ''Be rickonciled and bear it — we but linger fer a day!" 
 
 At the last Old Settlers' Meetin' we went j'intly, you and 
 
 me — 
 Your hosses and my wagon, as you wanted it to be; 
 And sence I can remember, from the time we've neghbored 
 
 here, 
 In all sich friendly actions you have double-done your sheer. 
 
 It was better than the meetin', too, that 9-mile talk we had 
 Of the times when we first settled here and travel was so bad; 
 When we had to go on hoss-back, and sometimes on "Shanks's 
 
 mare, " 
 And "blaze" a road fer them behind that had to travel thare. 
 
 And now we was a-trottin' 'long a level gravel pike, 
 In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you like — 
 Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmern-folks behind, 
 A-settin' in theyr Winsor cheers in perfect peace of mind ! 
 
24 WILLIAM LEACHMAN. 
 
 And we pinted out old landmarks, nearly faded out of sight : — 
 Thare they ust to rob the stage-coach; thare Gash Morgan 
 
 had the fight 
 With the old stag-deer that pronged him — how he battled fer 
 
 his life, 
 And lived to prove the story by the handle of his knife. 
 
 Thare the first griss-mill was put up in the Settlement, and we 
 Had tuck our grindin' to it in the Fall of Forty-three — 
 When we tuck our rifles with us, techin' elbows all the way, 
 And a-stickin' right together ev'ry minute, night and day. 
 
 Thare ust to stand the tavern that they called the "Travelers' 
 
 Rest," 
 And thare, beyent the covered bridge, "The Counterfitters' 
 
 Nest"— 
 Whare they claimed the house was ha'nted — that a man was 
 
 murdered thare, 
 And burried underneath the floor, er 'round the place some- 
 
 whare. 
 
 And the old Plank-road they laid along in Fifty-one er two — 
 You know we talked about the times when the old road was 
 
 new: 
 How "Uncle Sam" put down that road and never taxed the 
 
 State 
 Was a problum, don't you rickollect, we couldn't dimonstrate? 
 
And thare, beyent the covered bridge, "The Counterfitters' Nest." 
 
WILLIAM LEACHMAN. 25 
 
 Ways was devius, William Leachman, that me and you has 
 
 past; 
 But as I found you true at first, I find you true at last; 
 And, now the time's a-comin' mighty nigh our jurney's end, 
 I want to throw wide open all my soul to you, my friend. 
 
 With the stren'th of all my bein', and the heat of hart and 
 
 brane, 
 And ev'ry livin' drop of blood in artery and vane, 
 I love you and respect you, and I venerate your name, 
 Fer the name of William Leachman and True Manhood's jest 
 
 the same! 
 
26 MY FIDDLE. 
 
 MY FIDDLE. 
 
 My FIDDLE?— Well, I kindo' keep her handy, don't you 
 
 know! 
 Though I aint so much inclined to tromp the strings and 
 
 switch the bow 
 As I was before the timber of my elbows got so dry, 
 And my fingers was more limber-like and caperish and spry; 
 Yit I can plonk and plunk and plink, 
 
 And tune her up and play, 
 And jest lean back and laugh and wink 
 At ev'ry rainy day ! 
 
 My playin's only middlin' — tunes I picked up when a boy — 
 The kindo'-sorto' fiddlin' that the folks calls "cordaroy;" 
 "The Old Fat Gal," and "Rye-straw," and "My Sailyor's on 
 
 the Sea," 
 Is the old cowtillions / "saw" when the ch'ice is left to me; 
 And so I plunk and plonk and plink, 
 
 And rosum-up my bow, 
 And play the tunes that makes you think 
 The devil's in your toe ! 
 
MY FIDDLE. 27 
 
 I was alius a romancin', do-less boy, to tell the truth, 
 A-fiddlin' and a-dancin', and a-wastin' of my youth, 
 And a-actin' and a-cuttin'-up all sorts o' silly pranks 
 That wasn't worth a button of anybody's thanks! 
 But they tell me, when I ust to plink 
 
 And plonk and plunk and play, 
 My music seemed to have the kink 
 O' drivin' cares away! 
 
 That's how this here old fiddle's won my hart's indurin love ! 
 From the strings acrost her middle, to the schreechin' keys 
 
 above — 
 From her "apern," over "bridge," and to the ribbon round her 
 
 throat, 
 She's a wooin', cooin' pigeon, singin' "Love me" ev'ry note! 
 And so I pat her neck, and plink 
 Her strings with lovin' hands, 
 And, list'nin' clos't, I sometimes think 
 She kindo' understands ! 
 
28 THE CLOVER. 
 
 THE CLOVER. 
 
 Some sings of the lilly, and daisy, and rose, 
 
 And the pansies and pinks that the Summertime throws 
 
 In the green grassy lap of the medder that lays 
 
 Blinkin' up at the skyes through the sunshiney days; 
 
 But what is the lilly and all of the rest 
 
 Of the flowers, to a man with a hart in his brest 
 
 That was dipped brimmin' full of the honey and dew 
 
 Of the sweet clover-blossoms his babyhood knew? 
 
 I never set eyes on a clover-field now, 
 
 Er fool round a stable, er climb in the mow, 
 
 But my childhood comes back jest as clear and as plane 
 
 As the smell of the clover I'm sniffm' again; 
 
 And I wunder away in a bare-footed dream, 
 
 Whare I tangle my toes in the blossoms that gleam 
 
 With the dew of the dawn of the morning of love 
 
 Ere it wept ore the graves that I'm weepin' above. 
 
 And so I love clover — it seems like a part 
 Of the sacerdest sorrows and joys of my hart; 
 And wharever it blossoms, oh, thare let me bow 
 And thank the good God as I'm thankin' Him now; 
 And I pray to Him still fer the stren'th when I die, 
 To go out in the clover and tell it good-bye, 
 And lovin'ly nestle my face in its bloom 
 While my soul slips away on a breth of purfume. 
 
NEGHBORLY POEMS 
 
 ON FRIENDSHIP, GRIEF AND FARM-LIFE 
 
US FARMERS in the country, as the seasons go and come, 
 Is purty much like other folks, — we're apt to griwible some! 
 The Spring's too backward fer us, er too forward — ary one — ■ 
 We" 1 11 jaw about it anyhow, and have our way er none ! 
 The thaw's set in too suddent; er the frost's stayed in the soil 
 Too long to give the w heat a chance, and crops is bound to spoil! 
 The weather's either most too mild, er too outrageous rough, 
 And altogether too much rain, er not half rain enugh! 
 
 Noiv what Pd like and what you'd like is plane enugh to see: 
 Its jest to have old Providence drop round on you and me 
 And ast us what our views is first, regardin' shine er rain, 
 And post 'em when to shet her off, er let her on again ! 
 And yit Pd rut her, after all — consider n other chores 
 P got on hands, a'-tendin' both to my affairs and yours — . 
 Pd rzither miss the blame Pd git, a-rulin' things up thare. 
 And spend my ex try time in praise and gratitude and prayer. 
 
\ 
 
ERASMUS WILSON. 33 
 
 ERASMUS WILSON. 
 
 'Ras Wilson, I respect you, 'cause 
 You're common, like you alius was 
 Afore you went to town and s'prised 
 The world by git tin' "reckonized," 
 And yit perservin, as I say, 
 Your common hoss-sense ev'ryway ! 
 And when that name o' yourn occurs 
 On hand-bills, er in newspapers, 
 Er letters writ by friends 'at ast 
 About you, same as in the past, 
 And neghbors and relations 'low 
 You're out o' the tall timber now, 
 And "gittin' thare" about as spry's 
 The next ! — as / say, when my eyes, 
 Er ears, lights on your name, I mind 
 The first time 'at I come to find 
 You — and my Rickollection yells, 
 Jest jubilunt as old sleigh-bells — 
 " 'Ras Wilson! Say! Hold up! and shake 
 A. paw, fer old acquaintance sake!" 
 
34 
 
 ERASMUS WILSON. 
 
 My Rickollection, more'n like, 
 Haint overly too apt to strike 
 That what's-called cultchurd public eye 
 As wisdum of the deepest dye, — 
 And yit my Rickollection makes 
 So blame lots fewer bad mistakes, 
 Regardin' human-natchur' and 
 The fellers 'at I've shook theyr hand, 
 Than my best j edge/mint's done, the day 
 I've met 'em — 'fore I got away, — 
 'At — Well, 'Ras Wilson, let me grip 
 Your hand in warmest pardnership ! 
 
 Dad-burn ye! — Like to jest haul back 
 A' old flat-hander, jest che-whack! 
 And take you 'tvvixt the shoulders, say, 
 Sometime you're lookin' t'other way! — 
 Er, maybe whilse you're speakin' to 
 A whole blame Courthouse-full o 1 'thu- 
 Syastic friends, I'd like to jest 
 Come in-like and break up the nest 
 Afore you hatched anuther cheer, 
 And say: " 'Ras, /can't stand hitched here 
 All night — ner wouldn't ef I could! — 
 But Little Bethel neghborhood, 
 You ust to live at, 's sent some word 
 Fer you, ef ary chance occurred 
 
ERASMUS WILSON. 
 
 To git it to ye,— so ef you 
 
 Kin stop, I'm waitin' fer ye to !" 
 
 You're common as I said afore 
 
 You're common, yit uncommon more. 
 
 You alius kindo' 'pear, to me, 
 
 What all mankind had ort to be 
 
 Jest natchurl, and the more hurraws 
 
 You git, the less you know the cause 
 
 Like as ef God Hisself stood by, 
 
 Where best on earth hain't half knee-high, 
 
 And seein' like, and' knowin' He 
 
 'S the Only Great Man really, 
 
 You're jest content to size your hight 
 
 With any feller-man's in sight. 
 
 And even then they's scrubs, like me, 
 Feels stuck-up, in your company ! 
 
 Like now: — I want to go with you 
 
 Plum out o' town a mile er two 
 
 Clean past the Fair-ground whare's some hint 
 
 O' pennyrile er peppermint, 
 
 And bottom-lands, and timber thick 
 
 Enugh to sorto' shade the crick ! 
 
 I want to see you — want to set 
 
 Down somers, whare the grass hain't wet, 
 
36 ERASMUS WILSON. 
 
 And kindo' breathe you, like puore air — 
 And taste o' your tobacker thare, 
 And talk and chaw ! Talk o' the birds 
 We've knocked with cross-bows, — Afterwards 
 Drop, mayby, into some dispute 
 'Bout "pomgrannies," er cal'mus-root — 
 And how they growed, and whare ? — on tree 
 Er vine ? — Who's best boy-memory! — 
 And wasn't it gingsang, insted 
 O' Cal'mus-root, growed like you said? — 
 Er how to tell a coon-track from 
 A mussrat's ; — er how milksick come — 
 Er ef cows brung it ? — Er why now 
 We never see no "muley"-cow — 
 Ner "frizzly"-chicken — ner no "clay- 
 Bank" mare — ner no thin' thataway! — 
 And what's come o' the yeller-core 
 Old wortermelons ? — hain't no more. — ■ 
 Tomattusus, the same — all red- 
 Uns nowadays — All past joys fled — ■ 
 Each and all jest gone k- whizz ! 
 Like our days o' childhood is ! 
 
 Dag-gone it, Ras ! they hain't no friend, 
 It 'pears-like, left to comperhend 
 Sich things as these but you, and see 
 How dratted sweet they air to me ! 
 
ERASMUS WILSON. 37 
 
 But you, ' at 's loved 'em alius, and 
 Kin sort 'em out and understand 
 'Em, same as the fine books you've read, 
 And all fine thoughts you've writ, er said, 
 Er worked out, through long nights o' rain, 
 And doubts and fears, and hopes, again, 
 As bright as morning when she broke, — 
 You know a teardrop from a joke! 
 
 And so, 'Ras Wilson, stop and shake 
 
 A paw, fer old acquaintance sake ! 
 
38 MY RUTHERS. 
 
 MY RUTHERS. 
 
 [Writ durin' State Fair at Indanoplis, whilse visitin' a Soninlaw 
 then residin' thare, who has sence got back to the country whare 
 he says a man that's raised thare ort to a-stayed in the first place.] 
 
 I tell you what I'd ruther do — 
 Ef I only had my ruthers, — 
 I'd ruther work when I wanted to 
 Than be bossed round by others; — 
 I'd ruther kindo' git the swing 
 O' what was needed, first, I jing! 
 Afore I swet at anything!— 
 Ef I only had my ruthers; — 
 In fact I'd aim to be the same 
 With all men as my brothers; 
 And they'd all be the same with me — 
 Ef I only had my ruthers. 
 
 I wouldn't likely know it all — 
 Ef I only had my ruthers; — 
 I'd know some sense, and some base-ball — 
 Some old jokes, and — some others: 
 I'd know some politics, and 'low 
 Some tarif-speeches same as now, 
 Then go hear Nye on "Branes and How 
 To Detect Theyr Presence." T' others, 
 That stayed away, I'd let 'em stay — 
 All my dissentin' brothers 
 
MY RUTHERS. 39 
 
 Could chuse as shore a kill er cuore, 
 Ef I only had my ruthers. 
 
 The pore 'ud git theyr dues sometimes — 
 
 Ef I only had my ruthers, — 
 And be paid dollars 'stid o' dimes, 
 Fer childern, wives and mothers: 
 
 Theyr boy that slaves; theyr girl that sews 
 Fer others — not herself, God knows! — 
 The grave's her only change of clothes ! 
 . . . Ef I only had my ruthers, 
 They'd all have "stuff' and time enugh 
 
 To answer one-another's 
 Appealin' prayer fer "lovin' care" — 
 Ef I only had my ruthers. 
 
 They'd be few folks 'ud ast fer trust, 
 
 Ef I only had my ruthers, 
 And blame few business-men to bu'st 
 Theyrselves, er harts of others: 
 
 Big Guns that come here durin' Fair- 
 Week could put up jest anywhare, 
 And find a full-and-plenty thare, 
 Ef I only had my ruthers: 
 The rich and great 'ud 'sociate 
 
 With all theyr lowly brothers, 
 Feelin' we done the honorun— 
 Ef I only had my ruthers. 
 
4 o ON A DEAD BABE. 
 
 ON A DEAD BABE. 
 
 Fly away ! thou heavenly one ! — 
 
 I do hail thee on thy flight ! 
 Sorrow? thou hath tasted none — 
 Perfect joy is yourn by right. 
 Fly away ! and bear our love 
 To thy kith and kin above ! 
 
 I can tetch thy finger-tips 
 
 Ca'mly, and bresh back the hair 
 From thy forr'ed with my lips, 
 And not leave a teardrop thare. — 
 Weep fer Tomps and Ruth — and me- 
 But I cannot weep fer thee. 
 
A OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG. \v 
 
 A OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG. 
 
 It's the curiousest tiling in creation, 
 
 Whenever I hear that old song, 
 "Do They Miss Me at Home," I'm so bothered, 
 
 My life seems as short as it's long! — 
 Fer ev'ry thing 'pears like adzackly 
 
 It 'peared in the years past and gone, — 
 When I started out sparkin' at twenty, 
 
 And had my first neckercher on ! 
 
 Though I'm wrinkelder, older and grayer 
 
 Right now than my parents was then, 
 You strike up that song, "Do They Miss Me," 
 
 And I'm jest a youngster again! — 
 I'm a-standin' back thare in the furries 
 
 A-wishin' fer evening to come, 
 And a-whisperin' over and over 
 
 Them words, "Do They Miss Me at Home?" 
 
 You see, Marthy Ellen she sung it 
 
 The first time I heerd it; and so, 
 As she was my very first sweethart, 
 
 It reminds me of her, don't you know; — 
 
42 A OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG. 
 
 How her face ust to look, in the twilight, 
 As I tuck her to Spellin'; and she 
 
 Kep' a-hummin' that song tel I ast her, 
 Pine-blank, ef she ever missed me ! 
 
 I can shet my eyes now, as you sing it, 
 
 And hear her low answer in' words; 
 And then the glad chirp of the crickets, 
 
 As clear as the twitter of birds; 
 And the dust in the road is like velvet, 
 
 And the ragweed and fennel and grass 
 Is as sweet as the scent of the lillies 
 
 Of Eden of old, as we pass. 
 
 "Do They Miss Me at HomeV Sing it lower- 
 
 And softer — and sweet as the breeze 
 That powdered our path with the snowy 
 
 White bloom of the old locus'-trees! 
 Let the whipperwills he'p you to sing it, 
 
 And the echoes 'way over the hill, 
 Tel the moon boolges out, in a chorus 
 
 Of stars, and our voices is still. 
 
 But, oh! "They's a chord in the music 
 
 That's missed when her voice is away !" 
 
 Though I listen from midnight tel morning, 
 
 And dawn tel the dusk of the day ! 
 
A OLD PLAYED-OUT SONG. 43 
 
 And I grope through the dark, lookin' up'ards 
 And on through the heavenly dome, 
 
 With my longin' soul singin' and sobbin' 
 The words, "Do They Miss Me at Home?" 
 
44 "COON-DOG WESS." 
 
 "COON-DOG WESS." 
 
 "Coon-dog Wess"— he alius went 
 'Mongst us here by that-air name. 
 
 Moved in this-here Settlement 
 
 From next county — he laid claim, — 
 
 Lived down in the bottoms — whare 
 
 Ust to be some coons in thare ! — 
 
 In nigh Clayton's, next the crick, — 
 
 Mind old Billy ust to say 
 Coons in thare was jest that thick, 
 
 He'p him corn-plant any day! — 
 And, in rostneer-time, be then 
 Aggin' him to plant again ! 
 
 Well, — In Spring o' '67, 
 
 This-here "Coon-dog Wess" he come- 
 Fetchin' 'long 'bout forty-'leven 
 
 Ornriest-lookin' hounds, I gum! 
 Ever mortul-man laid eyes 
 On sence dawn o' Christian skies! 
 
"COON-DOG WESS." 45 
 
 Wife come traipsin' at the rag- 
 
 Tag-and-bobtail of the crowd, 
 Dogs and childern, with a bag 
 
 Corn-meal and some side-meat, — Proud 
 And as independunt — My! — 
 Yit a mild look in her eye. 
 
 Well— this "Coon-dog Wess" he jest 
 
 Moved in that-air little pen 
 Of a pole-shed, aidgin' west 
 
 On "The Slues o' Death," called then.— 
 Otter and mink-hunters ust 
 To camp thare 'fore game vam-moosd. 
 
 Abul-bodied man, — and lots 
 
 Call fer choppers — and fer hands 
 
 To git cross-ties out. — But what's 
 Work to sich as understands 
 
 Ways appinted and is hence 
 
 Under special providence? — 
 
 "Coon-dog Wess's" holts was hounds 
 And coon-huntin > \ and he knowed 
 
 His own range, and stayed in bounds, 
 And left work fer them 'at showed 
 
 Talents fer it — same as his 
 
 Gifts regardin' coon-dogs is. 
 
46 "COON-DOG WESS" 
 
 Hounds of ev'ry mungerl breed 
 
 Ever whelped on earth! — Had these 
 
 Yeller kind, with punkin-seed 
 
 Marks above theyr eyes — and fleas 
 
 Both to sell and keep ! — Also 
 
 These-here lop-yeerd hounds, you know. — 
 
 Yes-and brindle hounds — and long, 
 
 Ga'nt hounds, with them eyes they' got 
 
 So blame sorry, it seems wrong, 
 'Most, to kick 'em as to not! 
 
 Man, though, wouldn't dast, I guess, 
 
 Kick a hound fer coon-dog Wess!" 
 
 'Tended to his own affairs 
 
 Stric'ly; — made no brags, — and yit 
 
 You could see 'at them hounds' cares 
 'Peared like his, — and he'd a-fit 
 
 Fer 'em, same as wife er child ! — 
 
 Them facts made folks rickonciled, 
 
 Sorto', fer to let him be 
 
 And not pester him. And then 
 
 Word begin to spread 'at he 
 Had brung in as high as ten 
 
 Coon-pelts in one night — and yit 
 
 Didn't 'pear to boast of it! 
 
"COON-DOG WESS" 47 
 
 Neghborhood made some complaints 
 'Bout them plague-gone hounds at night 
 
 Howlin' fit to wake the saints, 
 
 Clean from dusk tel plum day-light ! 
 
 But to "Coon-dog Wess" them-thare 
 
 Howls was "music in the air!" 
 
 Fetched his pelts to Gilson's Store- 
 Newt he shipped fer him, and said, 
 
 Sence he'd cooned thare, he'd shipped more 
 Than three hunderd pelts!— "By Ned! 
 
 Git shet of my store," Newt says, 
 
 "I'd go in with 'Coon-dog Wess' !" 
 
 And the feller 'peared to be 
 
 Makin' best and most he could 
 Of his rale prospairity: — 
 
 Bought some household things — and good,- 
 Likewise, wagon- load onc't come 
 From wharever he'd moved from. 
 
 But pore feller's huntin'-days, 
 
 'Bout them times, was glidin' past! — 
 
 Goes out onc't one night and stays! 
 . . . Neghbors they turned out, at last, 
 
 Headed by his wife and one 
 
 Half-starved hound — and search begun. 
 
4 8 "COON-DOG WESS." 
 
 Boys said, that blame hound, he led 
 Searchin' party, 'bout a half 
 
 Mile ahead, and bellerin', said, 
 Worse'n ary yearlin' calf! — 
 
 Tel, at last, come fur-off sounds 
 
 Like the howl of other hounds. 
 
 And-sir, shore enugh, them signs 
 Fetched 'em — in a' hour er two — 
 
 Whare the pack was; — and they finds 
 
 "Coon-dog Wess" right thare; — And you 
 
 Would admitted he was right 
 
 Staying as he had, all night! 
 
 Facts is, cuttin' down a tree, 
 The blame thing had sorto' fell 
 
 In a twist-like — mercy me! 
 
 And had ketched him. — Couldn't tell, 
 
 Wess said, how he'd managed — yit 
 
 He'd got both legs under it ! 
 
 Fainted and come to, I s'pose, 
 'Bout a dozen times whilse they 
 
 Chopped him out ! — And wife she froze 
 To him ! — bresh his hair away 
 
 And smile cheerful' — only when 
 
 He'd faint. — Cry and kiss him then. 
 
"COON-DOG WESS." 49 
 
 Had his nerve !— And nussed him through,- 
 Neghbors he'pped her— all she'd stand.— 
 
 Had a loom, and she could do 
 Carpet-weavin' railly grand ! — 
 
 "'Sides," she ust to laugh and say, 
 
 "She'd have Wess, now, night and day!" 
 
 As fer him> he'd say, says-ee, 
 "I'm resigned to bein' lame:— 
 
 They was four coons up that tree, 
 And hounds got 'em, jest the same !" 
 
 'Peared like, one er two legs less 
 
 Never worried "Coon-dog Wess !" 
 
So PERFESSER JOHN CLARK RID PA TH. 
 
 LINES TO 
 PERFESSER JOHN CLARK RIDPATH A. M., LL. D. T-Y-TY! 
 
 [Cumposed by A Old Friend of the Fambily sence 'way back in 
 the Forties, when they Settled nigh Fillmore, Putnum County, this 
 State, whare John was borned and growed up, you might say, like 
 the wayside flower.] 
 
 Your neghbors in the country, whare you come from, haint 
 
 f ergot ! — 
 We knowecl you even better than your own-self, like as not. 
 We profissied your runnin'-geers 'ud stand a soggy load 
 And pull her, purty stiddy, up a mighty rocky road: 
 We been a-watchin your career sence you could write your 
 
 name — 
 
 But way you writ it first, I'll say, was jest a burnin' shame: — 
 
 Your "J. C."in the copybook, and "Ridpath" — mercy-sakes! — 
 
 Quiled up and tide in dubble bows, lookt like a nest o' snakes ! — 
 
 But you could read it, I suppose, and kindo' gloted on 
 
 A-bein' U J. C. Ridpath' 1 '' when we only called you "John. " 
 
 But you'd work 's well as fool, and what you had to do was 
 
 done: 
 We've watched you at the woodpile — not the woodshed — 
 
 wasent none, — 
 
PERFESSER JOHN CLARK RID PATH. 51 
 
 And snow and sleet, and haulm', too, and lookin' after stock, 
 And milkin', nights, and feedin' pigs, — then turnin' back the 
 
 clock, 
 So's you could set up study in' your 'Rethmatic, and fool 
 Your Parents, whilse a-piratin' your way through winter 
 
 school ! 
 And I've heerd tell — from your own folks — you've set and 
 
 baked your face 
 A-readin' Plutark Slives all night by that old fi-er-place. — 
 Yit, 'bout them times, the blackboard, onc't, had on it, I 
 
 dfe-clare, 
 "Yours truly, J. Clark Ridpath,"— and the teacher — left 
 
 it thare! 
 
 And they was other symptums, too, that pinted, plane as day 
 To nothin' short of College ! — and one was the lovin' way 
 Your mother had of cheerin' you to efforts brave and strong, 
 And puttin' more faith in you, as you needed it along; 
 She'd pat you on the shoulder, er she'd grab you by the hands, 
 And laugh sometimes, er cry sometimes. — They's few that 
 
 .understands 
 Jest what theyr mother's drivin' at when they act thataway; — ■ 
 But I'll say this fer yozc, John-Clark, — you answered, night 
 and day, 
 To ev'ry trust and hope of hers — and half your College 
 
 fame 
 Was battled fer and won fer her and glory of her name. 
 
52 PERFESSER JOHN CLARK RIDPATH. 
 
 The likes of you at College! But you went there. How you 
 
 paid 
 Your way nobody's astin' — but you worked, — you haint 
 
 afraid, — 
 Your clothes was, more'n likely, kindo' out o' style, perhaps, 
 And not as snug and warm as some 'at hid the other chaps; — 
 But when it come to Intullect— they tell me yourn was dressed 
 A leetle mite super ber, like, than any of the rest ! 
 And thare you stayed — and thare you've made your rickord, 
 
 fare and square — 
 Tel now its Fame 'at writes your name, approvin', ev'rywhare — 
 Not jibblets of it, nuther, — but all John Clark Ridpath, set 
 Plum 'at the dashboard of the whole-endurin' Alphabet ! 
 
THE AIRL Y DA VS. 53 
 
 A TALE OF THE AIRLY DAYS. 
 
 Oh ! tell me a tale of the airly days — 
 
 Of the times as they ust to be; 
 "Piller of Fi-er" and "Shakspeare's Plays" 
 
 Is a' most too deep fer me! 
 I want plane facts, and I want plane words, 
 
 Of the good old-fashiond ways, 
 When speech run free as the songs of birds 
 
 'Way back in the airly days. 
 
 Tell me a tale of the timber-lands — 
 
 Of the old-time pioneers; 
 Somepin' a pore man understands 
 
 With his feelins's well as ears. 
 Tell of the old log house, — about 
 
 The loft, and the puncheon floor — 
 The old fi-er-place, with the crane swung out, 
 
 And the latch-string through the door. 
 
54 THE AIRL Y DA VS. 
 
 Tell of the things jest as they was — 
 
 They don't need no excuse! — 
 Don't tech 'em up' like the poets does, 
 
 Tel theyr all too fine fer use ! — 
 Say they was 'leven in the fambily — 
 
 Two beds, and the chist, below, 
 And the trundle-beds that each helt three, 
 
 And the clock and the old bureau. 
 
 Then blow the horn at the old back-door 
 
 Tel the echoes all halloo, 
 And the childern gethers home onc't more, 
 
 Jest as they ust to do: 
 Blow fer Pap tel he hears and comes, 
 
 With Tomps and Elias, too, 
 A-marchin' home, with the fife and drums 
 
 And the old Red White and Blue ! 
 
 Blow and blow tel the sound draps low 
 
 As the moan of the whipperwill, 
 And wake up Mother, and Ruth and Jo, 
 
 All sleepin' at Bethel Hill: 
 Blow and call tel the faces all 
 
 Shine out in the back-log's blaze, 
 And the shadders dance on the old hewed wall 
 
 As they did in the airly days. 
 
"MYLO JONES'S WIFE" 55 
 
 "MYLO JONES'S WIFE." 
 
 "Mylo Jones's Wife" was all 
 
 I heerd, mighty near, last Fall — 
 
 Visitun relations down 
 
 Tother side of Morgantown ! 
 
 Mylo Jones's wife she does 
 
 This and that, and "those" and "thus" ! — 
 
 Can't 'bide babies in her sight — 
 Ner no childern, day and night, 
 
 Whoopin' round the premises — 
 Ner no not/iin* else, I guess! 
 
 Mylo Jones's wife she 'lows 
 
 She's the boss of her own house ! — 
 
 Mylo — consequences is — 
 
 Stays whare things seem some like his, — 
 
 Uses, mostly, with the stock — 
 
 Coaxin' "Old Kate" not to balk, 
 
 Ner kick hossflies' branes out, ner 
 
 Act, I s'pose, so much like her ! 
 
 Yit the wimmern-folks tells you 
 
 She's perfection. — Yes they do ! 
 
56 "MYLO JONES'S WIFE" 
 
 Mylo's wife she says she's found 
 
 Home haint home with men-folks round, 
 
 When they's work like kern to do — 
 
 Picklin' pears and butchern, too, 
 
 And a-rendern lard, and then 
 
 Cookin fer a pack of men 
 
 To come trackin' up the floor 
 
 She's scrubbed tel she'll scrub no more ! — 
 
 Yit she'd keep things clean ef they 
 
 Made her scrub tel Jedgmunt Day ! 
 
 Mylo Jones's wife she sews 
 Carpet-rags and patches clothes 
 Jest year in and out ! — and yit 
 Whare's the livin' use of it ? 
 She asts Mylo that. — And he 
 Gits back whare he'd ruther be, 
 With his team; — jest filozus — and don't 
 Never sware — like some folks wont ! 
 Think ef he'd cut loose, I gum ! 
 'D he'p his heavenly chances some ! 
 
 Mylo's wife don't see no use, 
 Ner no reason ner excuse 
 Fer his pore relations to 
 Hang round like they alius do ! 
 
"MYLO JONES'S WIFE." 57 
 
 Thare 'bout onc't a year — and she — 
 She jest gamuts 'em, folks tells me, 
 On spiced pears ! — Pass Mylo one, 
 He says "No, he don't chuse none!" 
 Workin' men like Mylo they 
 'D ort to have meat ev'ry day! 
 
 Dad-burn Mylo Jones's wife! 
 Ruther rake a blame caseknife 
 'Crost my wizzen than to see 
 Sich a womern rulin' me ! — 
 Ruther take and turn in and 
 Raise a fool mule-colt by hand ! 
 Mylo, though — od-rot the man ! — 
 Jest keeps ca'm — like some folks can — 
 And 'lows sich as her, I s'pose, 
 Is Mail's hepmeet ! — Mercy knows ! 
 
58 ON A SPLEND UD MA TCH. 
 
 ON A SPLENDUD MATCH. 
 
 [On the night of the marraige of the foregoin' couple, which shall 
 be nameless here, these lines was ca'mly dashed off in the albun of 
 the happy bride whilse the shivver-ree was goin' on outside the 
 residence.] 
 
 He was warned aginst trie womern- 
 She was warned aginst the man.- 
 
 And ef that won't make a weddin', 
 Wy, they's nothin' else that can ! 
 
OLD JOHN CLEVENGER. 59 
 
 OLD JOHN CLEVENGER ON BUCKEYES. 
 
 Old John Clevenger lets on, 
 
 Alius, like he's purty rough 
 Timber, — He's a grate old John ! — 
 
 "Rough?" — don't swaller no sich stuff! 
 Moved here, sence the war was through, 
 
 From Ohio — somers near 
 Old Bucyrus, — loyal, too, 
 
 As us "Hoosiers" is to here! 
 Git old John stirred up a bit 
 
 On his old home stompin' -ground — 
 Talks same as he lived thare yit, 
 
 When some subject brings it round — 
 Like, fer instunce, Sund'y last, 
 
 Fetched his wife, and et and stayed 
 All night with us. — Set and gassed 
 
 Tel plum midnight — 'cause I made 
 Some remark 'bout "buckeyes" and 
 
 "What was buckeyes good fer?" — So, 
 Like I 'lowed, he waved his hand 
 
 And lit in and let me know: — 
 
6o OLD JOHN CLEVENGER. 
 
 " 'What is Buckeyes good fer ?' — What's 
 Pineys and fergitmenots ? — 
 Honeysuckles, and sweet-peas, 
 And sweet -williamsuz, and these 
 Johnny-jump-ups ev'rywhare, 
 Growin' round the roots o' trees 
 In Spring-weather ? — what air they 
 Good fer ? — kin you tell me — Hey ? 
 'Good to. look at ?' Well they air ! 
 'Specially when Winter' 1 's gone, 
 Clean dead-certin ! and the wood's 
 Green again, and sun feels good's 
 June ! — and shed your blame boots on 
 The back porch, and lit out to 
 Roam round like you ust to do, 
 Barefoot, up and down the crick, 
 Whare the buckeyes growed so thick, 
 And witch-hazel and pop-paws, 
 And hackberries and black-haws — 
 With wild pizen-vines jis knit 
 Over and eii-nunder it, 
 And wove round it all, I jing ! 
 Tel you couldn't hardly stick 
 A durn caseknife through the thing ! 
 Wriggle round through that\ and then — 
 All het-up, and scratched and tanned, 
 And muskeeter-bit and mean- 
 
OLD JOHN CLEVENGER. 61 
 
 Feelin' — all at onc't again, 
 Come out suddent on a clean 
 Slopin' little hump o' green 
 Dry soft grass, as fine and grand 
 As a pollor-sofy ! — And 
 J is pile down thare ! — and tell me 
 Anywhares you'd ruther be — 
 'Ceptin' right thare, with the wild- 
 Flowrs all round ye, and your eyes 
 Smiliii' with 'em at the skies, 
 Happy as a little child! 
 Well ! — right here, I want to say, 
 Poets kin talk all they please 
 'Bout 'wild-flowrs, in colors gay', 
 And 'sweet blossoms flauntin' theyr 
 Beauteous fragrunce on the breeze' — 
 But the sight o' buckeyes jis 
 Sweet to me as blossoms is ! 
 
 "I'm Ohio-born — right whare 
 People's all called 'Buckeyes' thare- 
 ' Cause, I s'pose, our buckeye crap's 
 Biggest in the world, perhaps ! — 
 Ner my head don't stretch my hat 
 Too much on account o' that ' — 
 'Cause it's Natchur's ginerus hand 
 Sows 'em broadcast ore the land, 
 
62 OLD JOHN CLEVENGER. 
 
 With eye-single fer man's good 
 
 And the gineral neghborhood ! 
 
 So buckeyes jis natchurly 
 
 'Pears like kith-and-kin to me! 
 
 'Slike the good old sayin' wuz, 
 
 'Purty is as pnrty does /' — 
 
 We can't eat 'em, cooked er raw — 
 
 Yit, I mind, tomattusuz 
 
 Wuz considered pizenus 
 
 OncH — and dassent eat 'em ! — Pshaw — 
 
 'Twouldn't take me by supprise, 
 
 Someday, ef we et buckeyes! 
 
 That, though, 's nuther here ner thare !- 
 
 yis the Buckeye, whare we air, 
 
 In the present times, is what 
 
 Ockuppies my lovin' care 
 
 And my most perfoundest thought ! 
 
 . . . Guess, this minute, what I got 
 
 In my pocket, 'at I've packed 
 
 Purt-'nigh forty year.' — A dry, 
 
 Slick and shiny, warped and cracked, 
 
 Wilted, weazened old buckeye! 
 
 What's it thare fer ? What's my hart 
 
 In my brest fer ? — 'Cause its part 
 
 Of my life — and 'tends to biz — 
 
 Like this buckeye's bound to act— * 
 
 'Cause it 'tends to RhumatizX 
 
OLD JOHN CLEVENGER. 63 
 
 ". . .Ketched more rhumatiz than fish, 
 
 Seinen', onc't — and pants froze on 
 
 My blame legs ! — And ust to wish 
 
 I wuz well er dead and gone ! 
 
 Doc give up the case, and shod 
 
 His old hoss again and stayed 
 
 On good roads! — And thare I laid! 
 
 Pap he tuck some bluegrass sod 
 
 Steeped in whisky, bilin'-hot, 
 
 And socked that on ! Then I got 
 
 Sorto' holt o' him, somehow — 
 
 Kindo' crazy like, they say — 
 
 And I'd killed him, like as not, 
 
 Ef I hadn't swooned away! 
 
 Smell my scortcht pelt purt 'nigh now ! 
 
 Well — to make a long tale short — 
 
 I hung on the blame disease 
 
 Like a shavin'-hoss! and sort 
 
 O' wore it out by slow degrees — 
 
 Tell my legs wuz straight enugh 
 
 To poke through my pants again 
 
 And kick all the doctor-stuff 
 
 In the fier-place ! Then turned in 
 
 And tuck Daddy Craig's old cuore — 
 
 yis a buckeye — and that's shore. — 
 
 Haint no case o' rhumatiz 
 
 Kin subsist whare buckeyes is!" 
 
64 THE HOSS. 
 
 THE HOSS. 
 
 The hoss he is a splendud beast; 
 
 He is man's friend, as heaven designed, 
 And, search the world from west to east, 
 
 No honester you'll ever find ! 
 
 Some calls the hoss "a pore dumb brute," 
 And yit, like Him who died fer you, 
 
 I say, as I theyr charge refute, 
 
 " 'Fergive; they know not what they do!' " 
 
 No wiser animal makes tracks 
 
 Upon these earthly shores, and hence 
 
 Arose the axium, true as facts, 
 
 Extolled by all, as "Good hoss-sense!" 
 
 The hoss is strong, and knows his stren'th, — 
 You hitch him up a time er two 
 
 And lash him, and he'll go his le'nth, 
 And kick the dashboard out fer you ! 
 
 But, treat him alius good and kind, 
 And never strike him with a stick, 
 
 Ner aggervate him, and you'll find 
 He'll never do a hostile trick. 
 
THE HOSS. 65 
 
 A hoss whose master tends him right 
 And worters him with daily care, 
 
 Will do your biddhT with delight, 
 And act as docile as you air. 
 
 He'll paw and prance to hear your praise, 
 Because he's learnt to love you well; 
 
 And, though you can't tell what he says, 
 He'll nicker all he wants to tell. 
 
 He knows you when you slam the gate 
 At early dawn, upon your way 
 
 Unto the barn, and snorts elate, 
 To git his corn, er oats, er hay. 
 
 He knows you, as the orphant knows 
 The folks that loves her like theyr own, 
 
 And raises her and "finds" her clothes, 
 And "schools" her tel a womern-grown ! 
 
 I claim no hoss will harm a man, 
 Ner kick, ner run away, cavort, 
 
 Stump-suck, er balk, er "catamaran," 
 Ef you'll jest treat him as you ort. 
 5 
 
66 THE HOSS. 
 
 But when I see the beast abused, 
 
 And clubbed around as I've saw some, 
 
 I want to see his owner noosed, 
 And jest yanked up like Absolum J 
 
 Of course they's differunce in stock,- 
 
 A hoss that has a little yeer, 
 And slender build, and shaller hock, 
 
 Can beat his shadder, mighty near ! 
 
 Whilse one that's thick in neck and chist 
 And big in leg and full in flank, 
 
 That tries to race, I still insist 
 
 He'll have to take the second rank, 
 
 And I have jest laid back and laughed, 
 And rolled and wallered in the grass 
 
 At fairs, to see some heavy-draft 
 Lead out at first, yit come in last! 
 
 Each hoss has his appinted place, — 
 The heavy hoss should plow the soil;- 
 
 The blooded racer, he must race, 
 And win big wages fer his toil. 
 
THE HOSS. 67 
 
 I never bet — ner never wrought 
 Upon my feller-man to bet — 
 
 And yit, at times, I've often thought 
 Of my convictions with regret. 
 
 I bless the hoss from hoof to head— 
 From head to hoof, and tale to mane !- 
 
 I bless the hoss, as I have said, 
 
 From head to hoof, and back again ! 
 
 I love my God the first of all, 
 
 Then him that perished on the cross; 
 
 And next, my wife, — and then I fall 
 Down on my knees and love the hoss. 
 
68 EZRA HOUSE. 
 
 EZRA HOUSE. 
 
 [These lines was writ, in rather high sperits, jest at the close of 
 what's called the Anti Bellum Days, and more to be a-foolin' than 
 anything else, — though they is more er less facts in it. But some of 
 the boys, at the time we was all a-singin' it, fer Ezry's benefit, to 
 the old tune of "The Oak and the Ash and the Bonny Wilier Tree," 
 got it struck off in the weekly, without leave er lisence of mine; and 
 so sence they's alius some of 'em left to rigg me about it yit, I might 
 as well claim the thing right here and now, so here goes. I give it 
 jest as it appeard, fixed up and grammatisized consider'ble, as the 
 editer told me he took the liburty of doin', in that sturling old home 
 paper The Advance — as sound a paper yit to-day and as stanch and 
 abul as you'll find in a hunderd.] 
 
 Come listen, good people, while a story I do tell, 
 Of the sad fate of one which I knew so passing well; 
 He enlisted at McCordsville, to battle in the south, 
 And protect his country's union; his name was Ezra House. 
 
 He was a young school-teacher, and educated high 
 In regards to Ray's arithmetic, and also Algebra: 
 He give good satisfaction, but at his country's call 
 He dropped his position, his Algebra and all. 
 
 "Its Oh, I'm going to leave you, kind scholars," he said — 
 For he wrote a composition the last day and read; 
 And it brought many tears in the eyes of the school, 
 To say nothing of his sweetheart he was going to leave so 
 soon. 
 
EZRA HOUSE. 69 
 
 "I have many recollections to take with me away, 
 Of the merry transpirations in the school-room so gay; 
 And of all that's past and gone I will never regret 
 I went to serve my country at the first of the outset !" 
 
 He was a good penman, and the lines that he wrote 
 On that sad occasion was too fine for me to quote, — 
 For I was there and heard it, and I ever will recall 
 It brought the happy tears to the eyes of us all. 
 
 And when he left, his sweetheart she fainted away, 
 
 And said she could never forget the sad day 
 
 When her lover so noble, and gallant and gay, 
 
 Said "Fare you well, my true love !" and went marching away. 
 
 But he hadn't been gone for more than two months, 
 When the sad news come — "he was in a skirmish once, 
 And a cruel rebel ball had wounded him full sore 
 In the region of the chin, through the canteen he wore. " 
 
 But his health recruited up, and his wounds they got well, 
 But whilst he was in battle at Bull Run or Malvern Hill, 
 The news come again, so sorrowful to hear — 
 "A sliver from a bombshell cut off his right ear." 
 
 But he stuck to the boys, and it's often he would write, 
 That "he wasn't afraid for his country to fight." 
 But oh, had he returned on a furlough, I believe 
 He would not, to-day, have such cause to grieve. 
 
70 EZRA HOUSE. 
 
 For in another battle — the name I never heard — 
 
 He was guarding the wagons when an accident occurred, — 
 
 A comrade who was under the influence of drink, 
 
 Shot him with a musket through the right cheek, I think. 
 
 But his dear life was spared; but it hadn't been for long, 
 'Till a cruel rebel colonel come riding along, 
 And struck him with his sword, as many do suppose, 
 For his cap-rim was cut off, and also his nose. 
 
 But Providence, who watches o'er the noble and the brave, 
 Snatched him once more from the jaws of the grave; 
 And just a little while before the close of the war, 
 He sent his picture home to his girl away so far. 
 
 And she fell into decline, and she wrote in reply, 
 "She had seen his face again and was ready to die;" 
 And she wanted him to promise, when she was in her tomb, 
 He would only visit that by the light of the moon. 
 
 But he never returned at the close of the war, 
 And the boys that got back said he hadn't the heart; 
 But he got a position in a powder-mill, and said 
 He hoped to meet the doom that his country denied. 
 
A PEN-PI CTUR\ 71 
 
 A PEN-PICTUR' 
 OF A CERTIN FRIVVOLUS OLD MAN. 
 
 Most ontimely old man yit ! 
 
 'Pear-like sometimes he jest tries 
 
 His fool-self, and takes the bitt 
 In his teeth and jest de-fies 
 
 All perpryties ! — Lay and swet 
 Doin' nothirt — only jest 
 
 Sorto' speckillatun on 
 
 Whare old summertimes is gone, 
 And 'bout things that he loved best 
 
 When a youngster ! Heerd him say 
 
 Springtimes made him thataway — 
 Speshully on Sundays — when 
 Sun shines out and in again, 
 
 And the lonesome old hens they 
 • Git off under the old kern- 
 Bushes, and in deep concern 
 
 Talk-like to theyrselvs, and scratch 
 Kindo' absunt -minded, jest 
 
 Like theyr thoughts was fur away 
 
 In some neghbor's gyarden-patch 
 Folks has tended carefullest ! 
 
72 A PEN-PI CTUR\ 
 
 Heerd the old man dwell on these 
 
 Idys time and time again ! — 
 Heerd him claim that orchurd-trees 
 
 Bloomin', put the mischief in 
 His old hart sometimes that bad 
 And owdacious that he "had 
 
 To break loose someway," says he, 
 
 "Ornry as I ust to be!" 
 
 Heerd him say one time — when I 
 Was a sorto' standin' by, 
 
 And the air so still and clear, 
 
 Heerd the bell fer church clean here !- 
 Said : "Ef I could climb and set 
 
 On the old three-cornerd rail 
 Old home-place, nigh Maryette', 
 
 Swop my soul off, hide and tale !" 
 And-sir ! blame ef tear and laugh 
 Didn't ketch him half and half! 
 
 "Oh!" he says, "to wake and be 
 Barefoot, in the airly dawn 
 
 In the pastur! — thare," says he, 
 "Standin' whare the cow's slep' on 
 
 The cold, dewy grass that's got 
 
 Print of her jest steamy hot 
 Fer to warm a feller's heels 
 In a while ! — How good it feels ! 
 
A PEN-PIC TUR\ 73 
 
 Sund'y ! — Country ! — Morning ! — Hear 
 Nothin' but the silunce. — see 
 
 Nothin' but green woods and clear 
 Skies and unwrit poetry 
 By the acre ! . . . Oh !" says he, 
 
 "What's this voice of mine? — to seek 
 
 To speak out, and yit cartt speak ! 
 
 " Think! — the lazyest of days" — 
 
 Takin' his contrairyest leap, 
 
 He went on, — "git up, er sleep — 
 Er whilse feedin', watch the haze 
 
 Dancin' 'crost the wheat, — and keep 
 My pipe goin' laisurely — 
 Puff and whiff as pleases me, — ■ 
 
 Er I'll leave a trail of smoke 
 Through the house! — no one'll say 
 ' 'Throw that nasty thing awayP 
 
 'Pear-like nothin' sacerd's broke, 
 Goin' barefoot ef I chuse ! — 
 
 I have fiddled ; — and dug bait 
 And went fishin" 1 ; — pitched hoss-shoes — 
 Whare they couldn't see us from 
 The main road. — And I've beat some. 
 
 I've set round and had my joke 
 With the thrashers at the barn — 
 And I've swopped 'em yarn fer yarn ! — 
 
74 A PEN-PICTUR\ 
 
 Er I've hepped the childern poke 
 Fer hens' -nests. — agged on a match 
 Twixt the boys, to watch 'em scratch 
 
 And paw round and rip and tear, 
 
 And bust buttons and pull hair 
 To theyr rompin' harts' content — 
 
 And me jest a-settin' thare 
 Hatchin' out more devilment ! 
 
 "What you s'pose now ort to be 
 Done with sich a man ?" says he — 
 "Sich a fool-old-man as me I" 
 
WE T- WE A THER TALK. 75 
 
 WET-WEATHER TALK. 
 
 It hain't no use to grumble and complane; 
 
 It's jest as cheap and easy to rejoice; 
 When God sorts out the weather and sends rain, 
 W'y, rain's my choice. 
 
 Men giner'ly, to all intents— 
 
 Although they're apt to grumble some- 
 Puts most theyr trust in Providence, 
 And takes things as they come- 
 That is, the commonality 
 Of men that's lived as long as me 
 Has watched the world enugh to learn 
 They're not the boss of this concern. 
 
 With some, of course, it's different— 
 
 I've saw young men that knowed it all, 
 And didn't like the way things went 
 On this terrestial ball;— 
 
 But all the same, the rain, some way, 
 Rained jest as hard on picnic day; 
 Er, when they railly wanted it, 
 It mayby wouldn't rain a bit! 
 
76 WET-WEATHER TALK. 
 
 In this existunce, dry and wet 
 
 Will overtake the best of men — 
 Some little skift o' clouds'll shet 
 The sun off now and then. — 
 
 And mayby, whilse you're wundern who 
 You've fool-like lent your umbrelP to, 
 And zvant it — out'll pop the sun, 
 And you'll be glad you hain't got none! 
 
 It aggervates the farmers, too — 
 
 They's too much wet, er too much sun, 
 Er work, er waitin' round to do 
 Before the plowin's done. 
 
 And mayby, like as not, the wheat, 
 Jest as it's lookin' hard to beat, 
 Will ketch the storm — and jest about 
 The time the corn's a-jintin' out. 
 
 These-here cy-clones a-foolin' round — 
 
 And back'ard crops ! — and wind and rain !— 
 And yit the corn that's wallerd down 
 May elbow up again ! — 
 
 They hain't no sense, as 1 can see, 
 Fer mortuls, sich as us, to be 
 A-faultin' Natchur's wise intents, 
 And lockin' horns with Providence ! 
 
WET-WEATHER TALK. 77 
 
 It hain't no use to grumble and complane; 
 
 Its jest as cheap and easy to rejoice. — 
 When God sorts out the weather and sends rain, 
 Wy, rain's my choice. 
 
78 A PORE JOKE. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON A PORE JOKE. 
 
 I like fun — and I like jokes 
 'Bout as well as most o' folks! — 
 
 Like my joke, and like my fun; — 
 But a joke, I'll state right here, 
 'Sgot some p'int — er I don't keer 
 
 Fer no joke that haint got none. — 
 I haint got no use, I'll say, 
 Fer a pore joke, anyway! 
 
 F'rinstunce, now, when some folks gits 
 To rely in' on theyr wits, 
 Ten to one they git too smart 
 And spile it all, right at the start ! 
 Feller wants to jest go slow 
 And do his thinkin? first, you know. 
 'F I can't think up somepin' good, 
 I set still and chaw my cood ! 
 
 'F you think nothin' — jest keep on, 
 But don't say it — er you're gone! 
 
A MORTUL PRAYER. 79 
 
 A MORTUL PRAYER. 
 
 OH ! Thou that vaileth from all eyes 
 
 The glory of thy face, 
 And setteth throned behind the skies 
 
 In thy abiding-place: 
 Though I but dimly recko'nize 
 
 Thy purposes of grace; 
 And though with weak and wavering 
 
 Deserts, and vexd with fears, 
 I lift the hands I cannot wring 
 
 All dry of sorrow's tears, 
 Make puore my prayers that daily wing 
 
 Theyr way unto thy ears! 
 
 Oh ! with the hand that tames the flood 
 
 And smooths the storm to rest, 
 Make bammy dews of all the blood 
 
 That stormeth in my brest, 
 And so refresh my hart to bud 
 
 And bloom the loveliest. 
 Lull all the clammer of my soul 
 
 To silunce; bring release 
 Unto the brane still in controle 
 
 Of doubts; bid sin to cease, 
 And let the waves of pashun roll 
 
 And kiss the shores of peace. 
 
80 A MORTUL PRAYER. 
 
 Make me to love my feller-man — 
 
 Yea, though his bitterness 
 Doth bite as only adders can — 
 
 Let me the fault confess, 
 And go to him and clasp his hand 
 
 And love him none the less. 
 So keep me, Lord, ferever free 
 
 From vane concete er whim; 
 And he whose pius eyes can see 
 
 My faults, however dim, — 
 Oh ! let him pray the least fer me, 
 
 And me the most fer him. 
 
THE FIRST BL UEBIRD. 
 
 THE FIRST BLUEBIRD. 
 
 Jest rain and snow ! and rain again ! 
 And dribble ! drip ! and blow ! 
 
 Then snow ! and thaw ! and slush ! and then- 
 Some more rain and snow! 
 
 This morning I was 'most afeard 
 
 To wake up — when, I jing! 
 T seen the sun shine out and heerd 
 
 The first bluebird of Spring ! — 
 Mother she'd raised the winder some; — 
 And in acrost the orchurd come, 
 
 Soft as a angel's wing, 
 A breezy, treesy, beesy hum, 
 
 Too sweet fer anything ! 
 
 The winter's shroud was rent a-part — 
 
 The sun bust forth in glee, — 
 And when that bhiebird sung, my hart 
 
 Hopped out o' bed with me! 
 
 6 
 
82 EVA GENE BAKER. 
 
 EVAGENE BAKER — WHO WAS DYIN OF DRED CONSUM- 
 TION AS THESE LINES WAS PENNED BY A TRUE FRIEND. 
 
 Pore afflicted Evagene! 
 
 Whilse the woods is fresh and green, 
 
 And the birds on ev'ry hand 
 
 Sings in rapture sweet and grand, — 
 
 Thou, of all the joyus train, 
 
 Art bedridden, and in pain 
 Sich as only them can cherish 
 Who, like flowrs, is first to perish! 
 
 When the neghbors brought the word 
 
 She was down the folks inferred 
 
 It was jest a cold she'd caught, 
 
 Dressin' thinner than she'd ort 
 
 Fer the frolicks and the fun 
 
 Of the dancin' that she'd done 
 'Fore the Spring was flush er ary 
 Blossom on the peach er cherry. 
 
EVA GENE BAKER. S3 
 
 But, last Sund'y, her request 
 
 Fer the Church's prayers was jest 
 
 Rail hart-renderin' to hear! — 
 
 Many was the silunt tear 
 
 And the tremblin' sigh, to show 
 
 She was dear to us below 
 
 On this earth — and dearer, even, 
 When we thought of her a-leavin' ! 
 
 Sisters prayed, and coted from 
 Genesis to Kingdom-come 
 Provin' of her title clear 
 To the mansions.— "Even her," 
 They claimed, "might be saved, someway, 
 Though she'd danced and played crowkay, 
 And wrought on her folks to git her 
 Fancy shoes that never fit her !" 
 
 Us to pray fer Evagene ! — 
 With her hart as puore and clean 
 As a rose is after rain 
 When the sun comes out again ! — 
 What's the use to pray fer her ? 
 She don't need no prayin' fer! — 
 Needed, all her life, more playirt 
 Than she ever needed prayin' ! 
 
84 EVA GENE BAKER. 
 
 I jest thought of all she'd been 
 Sence her mother died, and when 
 She turned in and done her part — 
 All her cares on that child-hart ! — 
 Thought of years she'd slaved — and had 
 Saved the farm — danced and was glad . . . 
 Mayby Him who marks the sporry 
 Will smooth down her wings tomorry ! 
 
ON ANY ORDENAR Y MAN. 85 
 
 ON ANY ORDENARY MAN IN A HIGH STATE OF LAUGH- 
 TURE AND DELIGHT. 
 
 As its give' me to percieve, 
 
 I most certin'y believe 
 
 When a man's jest glad plum through, 
 
 God's pleased with him, same as you. 
 
$6 TO WN AND COUNTR Y. 
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY. 
 
 They's a predjudice alius twixt country and town 
 
 Which I wisht in my hart wasent so. 
 You take city people, jest square up and down, 
 
 And theyr mighty good people to know: 
 And whare's better people a-livin', to-day, 
 
 Than us in the country ? — Yit good 
 As both of us is, we're divorsed, you might say, 
 
 And won't compermise when we could! 
 
 Now as nigh into town fer yer Pap, ef you please, 
 
 Is the what's called the sooburbs. — Fer thare 
 You'll at least ketch a whiff of the breeze and a snift 
 
 Of the breth of wild-flowrs ev'rywhare. 
 They's room fer the childern to play, and grow, too— 
 
 And to roll in the grass, er to climb 
 Up a tree and rob nests, like they ortent to do, 
 
 But they'll do anyhow ev'ry time ! 
 
 My Son-in-law said, when he lived in the town, 
 He jest natchurly pined, night and day, 
 
 Fer a sight of the woods, er a acre of ground 
 Whare the trees wasent all cleared away! 
 
TO WN AND CO UNTR Y. 87 
 
 And he says to me onc't, whilse a-visitin' us 
 On the farm, "It's not strange, I declare, 
 
 That we can't coax you folks, without raisin' a fuss, 
 To come to town, visitin' thare!" 
 
 And says I, "Then git back whare you sorto' belong — 
 
 And Madaline, too, — and yer three 
 Little childern," says I, "that don't know a bird-song, 
 
 Ner a hawk from a chicky-dee-dee ! 
 Git back," I-says-I, "to the blue of the sky 
 
 And the green of the fields, and the shine 
 Of the sun, with a laugh in yer voice and yer eye 
 
 As harty as Mother's and mine!" 
 
 Well — long-and-short of it, — he's compermised some — 
 
 He's moved in the sooburbs. — And now 
 They don't haf to coax, when they want us to come, 
 
 'Cause we turn in and go anyhow ! 
 Fer thare — well, they's room fer the songs and purfume 
 
 Of the grove and the old orchurd-ground, 
 And they's room fer the childern out thare, and they's room 
 
 Fer theyr Gran' pap to waller 'em round ! 
 
88 LINES FER ISAAC BR AD WELL. 
 
 LINES FER ISAAC BRADWELL, OF INDANOPLIS, IND., 
 COUNTY-SEAT OF MARION. 
 
 [Writ on the flyleaf of a volume of the author's poems that come 
 in one of gittin' burnt up in the great Bowen-Merrill's fire of March 
 17, 1890.] 
 
 Through fire and flood this book has passed. — 
 
 Fer what? — I hardly dare to ast — 
 
 Less'n its still to pamper me 
 
 With extry food fer vanity; — 
 
 Fer, sence its fell in hands as true 
 
 h% yourn is — and a Hoosier too, — 
 
 I'm prouder of the book, I jmg! 
 
 Than 'fore they tried to burn the thing! 
 
DECORATION DAY ON THE PLACE. 89 
 
 DECORATION DAY ON THE PLACE. 
 
 Its lonesome — sorto' lonesome, — its a Sunday -day, to me, 
 It 'pears-like — more'n any day I nearly ever see ! 
 Yit, with the Stars and Stripes above, a-flutterin' in the air, 
 On ev'ry Soldier's grave I'd love to lay a lilly thare. 
 
 They say, though, Decoration Days is ginerly observed 
 'Most evWywhares — espeshally by soldier-boys that's served. — 
 But me and Mother's never went — we seldom git away, — 
 In pint o' fact, we're alius home on Decoration Day. 
 
 They say the old boys marches through the streets in colum's 
 
 grand, 
 A -f oiler in' the old war-tunes theyr playin' on the band — 
 And citizuns all jinin' in — and little childern, too — 
 All marchin 1 , under shelter of the old Red White and Blue. — 
 
 With roses ! roses ! roses ! — ev'rybody in the town ! — 
 
 And crowds o' little girls in white, jest fairly loaded down! — 
 
 Oh! don't The Boys know it, from theyr camp acrost the 
 
 hill ?— 
 Don"t they see theyr com'ards comin' and the old flag wavin' 
 
 still ? 
 
9 o DECORATION DAY ON THE PLACE. 
 
 Oh! can't they hear the bugul and the rattle of the drum? — 
 Ain't they no way under heavens they can rickollect us some ? 
 Ain't they no way we can coax 'em, through the roses, jest to 
 
 say 
 They know that ev'ry day on earth's theyr Decoration Day ? 
 
 We've tried that — me and Mother, — whare Elias takes his rest, 
 In the orchurd — in his uniform, and hands acrost his brest, 
 And the flag he died fer, smilin' and a-ripplin' in the breeze 
 Above his grave — and over that, — the robin in the trees ! 
 
 And yit its lonesome — lonesome! — It's a Sund'y-day, tome, 
 1 1 'pears-like — more'n any day I nearly ever see ! — 
 Still, with the Stars and Stripes above, a-flutterin' in the air, 
 On ev'ry Soldier's grave I'd love to lay a lilly thare. 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 "And the common people heard him gladly T 
 
 Of what shall be said herein of dialect, let it be 
 understood the term dialect referred to is of that 
 general breadth of meaning given it to-day, name- 
 ly, any speech or vernacular outside the prescribed 
 form of good English in its present state. The 
 present state of the English is, of course, not any 
 one of its prior states. So first let it be remarked 
 that it is highly probable that what may have been 
 the best of English once may now by some be 
 counted as a weak, inconsequent jbatois, or dia- 
 lect. 
 
 To be direct, it is the object of this article to 
 show that dialect is not a thing to be despised in 
 any event — that its origin is oftentimes of as royal 
 caste as that of any speech. Listening back, from 
 the standpoint of to-day, even to the divine sing- 
 ing of that old classic master to whom England's 
 late laureate refers as 
 
 "... the first warbler, whose sweet breath 
 Preluded those melodious bursts that fill 
 The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
 With sounds that echo still ; " 
 
 95 
 
96 DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 or to whom Longfellow alludes, in his matchless 
 sonnet, as 
 
 "... the poet of the dawn, who wrote 
 The Canterbury Tales, and his old age 
 Made beautiful with song ; — " 
 
 Chaucer's verse to us is now as veritably dialect as 
 to that old time it was the chastest English ; and 
 even then his materials were essentially dialect 
 when his song was at best pitch. Again, our 
 present dialect, of most plebeian ancestry, may 
 none the less prove worthy. Mark the recogni- 
 tion of its own personal merit in the great new 
 dictionary, where what was, in our own remem- 
 brance, the most outlandish dialect, is now good, 
 sound, official English. 
 
 Since Literature must embrace all naturally ex- 
 isting materials — physical, mental, and spiritual — 
 we have no occasion to urge its acceptance of so- 
 called dialect, for dialect is in Literature, and has 
 been there since the beginning of all written 
 thought and utterance. Strictly speaking, as well 
 as paradoxically, all verbal expression is more or 
 less dialectic however grammatical. While usage 
 establishes grammar, it no less establishes so-called 
 dialect. Therefore we may as rightfully refer to 
 "so-called grammar." 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 97 
 
 It is not really a question of Literature's posi- 
 tion toward dialect that we are called upon to con- 
 sider, but rather how much of Literature's valua- 
 ble time shall be taken up by this dialectic coun- 
 try cousin. This question Literature her gracious 
 self most amiably answers by hugging to her breast 
 voluminous tomes, from Chaucer on to Dickens, 
 from Dickens on to Joel Chandler Harris. And 
 this affectionate spirit on the part of Literature, in 
 the main, we all most feelingly indorse. 
 
 Briefly summed, it would appear that dialect 
 means something more than mere rude form of 
 speech and action — that it must, in some righteous 
 and substantial way, convey to us a positive force 
 of soul, truth, dignity, beauty, grace, purity and 
 sweetness that may even touch us to the tender- 
 ness of tears. Yes, dialect as certainly does all 
 this as that speech and act refined may do it, and 
 for the same reason : it is simply, purely natural 
 and human. 
 
 Yet the Lettered and the Unlettered powers are 
 at swords' points, and very old and bitter foemen, 
 too, they are. As fairly as we can, then, let us 
 look over the field of these contending forces and 
 note their diverse positions : First, the Lettered 
 — they who have the full advantages of refined ed- 
 ucation, training, and association — are undoubt- 
 
g8 dialect in literature. 
 
 edly as wholly out of order among the Unlettered 
 as the Unlettered are out of order in the exalted 
 presence of the Lettered. Each faction may in 
 like aversion ignore or snub the other ; but a long- 
 suffering Providence must bear with the society of 
 both. There may be one vague virtue demon- 
 strated by this feud : each division will be found 
 unwaveringly loyal to its kind, and mutually they 
 desire no interchange of sympathy whatever. — 
 Neither element will accept from the other any 
 patronizing treatment; and, perhaps, the more 
 especially does the Unlettered faction reject any 
 thing in vaguest likeness of this spirit. Of the 
 two divisions, in graphic summary, — one knows 
 the very core and center of refined civilization, and 
 this only ; the other knows the outlying wilds and 
 suburbs of civilization, and this only. Whose, 
 therefore, is the greater knowledge, and whose 
 the just right of any whit of self-glorification ? 
 
 A curious thing, indeed, is this factional pride, 
 as made equally manifest in both forces; in one, 
 for instance, of the Unlettered forces: The aver- 
 age farmer, or countryman, knows, in reality, a 
 far better and wider range of diction than he per- 
 mits himself to use. He restricts and abridges the 
 vocabulary of his speech, fundamentally, for the 
 reason that he fears offending his rural neighbors, 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 99 
 
 to whom a choicer speech might suggest, on his 
 part, an assumption — a spirit of conscious superi- 
 ority, and therewith an implied reflection on their 
 lack of intelligence and general worthiness. If 
 there is any one text universally known and nur- 
 tured of the Unlettered masses of our common 
 country, it is that which reads, "All men are cre- 
 ated equal." Therefore it is a becoming thing 
 when true gentility prefers to overlook some vari- 
 ations of the class, who, more from lack of culti- 
 vation than out of rude intent, sometimes almost 
 compel a positive doubt of the nice veracity of 
 the declaration, or at least a grief at the munifi- 
 cent liberality of the so-bequoted statement. 
 The somewhat bewildering position of these con- 
 flicting forces leaves us nothing further to consider, 
 but; how to make the most and best of the situa- 
 tion so far as Literature may be hurt or helped 
 thereby. 
 
 Equally with the perfect English, then, dialect 
 should have full justice done it. Then always it 
 is worthy, and in Literature is thus welcome. 
 The writer of dialect should as reverently venture 
 in its use as in his chastest English. His effort in 
 the scholarly and elegant direction suffers no neg- 
 lect — he is schooled in that, perhaps, he may ex- 
 plain. Then let him be schooled in dialect be- 
 
ioo DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 fore he sets up as an expounder of it — a teacher, 
 forsooth a master! The real master must not only 
 know each varying light and shade of dialect ex- 
 pression, but he must as minutely know the inner 
 character of the people whose native tongue it is, 
 else his product is simply a pretence — a willful 
 forgery, a rank abomination. Dialect has been, 
 and is thus insulted, vilified and degraded, now 
 and continually; and through this outrage solely, 
 thousands of generous-minded readers have been 
 turned against dialect who otherwise would have 
 loved and blessed it in its real form of crude pur- 
 ity and unstrained sweetness — 
 
 i 
 
 " Honey dripping from the comb l" 
 
 Let no impious faddist, then, assume its just in- 
 terpretation. He may know everything else in the 
 world, but not dialect, nor dialectic people, for 
 both of which he has supreme contempt, which 
 same, be sure, is heartily returned. Such a "su- 
 perior" personage may even go among these sim- 
 ple country people and abide indefinitely in the 
 midst of them, yet their more righteous contempt 
 never for one instant permits them to be their real 
 selves in his presence. In consequence, his most 
 conscientious report of them, their ways, lives, and 
 interests, is absolutely of no importance or value 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 101 
 
 in the world. He never knew them, nor will he 
 ever know them. They are not his kind of peo- 
 ple, any more than he is their kind of man ; and 
 their disappointment grieves us more than his. 
 
 The master in Literature, as in any Art, is that 
 "divinely gifted man" who does just obeisance to 
 all living creatures, "both man and beast and 
 bird." It is this master only who, as he writes, 
 can sweep himself aside and leave his humble 
 characters to do the thinking and the talking. 
 This man it is who celebrates his performance — 
 not himself. His work he celebrates because it is 
 not his only, but because he feels it the conscien- 
 tious reproduction of the life itself — as he has seen 
 and known and felt it;— a representation it is of 
 God's own script, translated and transcribed by 
 the worshipful mind and heart and hand of genius. 
 This virtue in all art is impartially demanded, and 
 genius only can fully answer the demand in any 
 art for which we claim perfection. The painter 
 has his expression of it, with no slighting of the 
 dialectic element ; so, too, the sculptor, the musi- 
 cian, and the list entire. In the line of Literature 
 and literary material, an illustration of the nice 
 meaning and distinction of dialectic art will be 
 found in Charles Dudley Warner's comment of 
 George Cable's work, as far back as 1883, refer- 
 
102 DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 ring to the author's own rendition of it from the 
 platform. Mr. Warner says : 
 
 " While the author was unfolding to his audience a life 
 and society unfamiliar to them and entrancing them with 
 pictures, the reality of which none doubted and the spell 
 of which none cared to escape, it occurred to me that here 
 was the solution of all the pother we have recently got 
 into about the realistic and the ideal schools in fiction. 
 In ' Posson Jone,' an awkward camp-meeting country 
 preacher is the victim of a vulgar confidence game ; the 
 scenes are the street, a drinking-place, a gambling-saloon, 
 a bull-ring, and a calaboose ; there is not a ' respectable ' 
 character in it. Where shall we look for a more faithful 
 picture of low life ? Where shall we find another so viv- 
 idly set forth in all its sordid details ? And yet s-ee how 
 art steps in, with the wand of genius, to make literature ! 
 Over the whole the author has cast an ideal light ; over a 
 picture that, in the hands of a bungling realist, would have 
 been repellent he has thrown the idealizing grace that 
 makes it one of the most charming sketches in the world. 
 Here is nature, as nature only ought to be in literature, 
 elevated but never departed from." 
 
 So we find dialect, as a branch of Literature, 
 worthy of the high attention and employment of 
 the greatest master in letters — not the merest 
 mountebank. Turn to Dickens, in innumerable 
 passages of pathos : the death of poor Jo, or that 
 of the " Cheap John's " little daughter in her fath- 
 er's arms, on the foot-board of his peddling cart 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 103 
 
 before the jeering of the vulgar mob ; smile 
 moistly, too, at Mr. Sleary's odd philosophies; 
 or at the trials of Sissy Jupe ; or lift and tower 
 with indignation, giving ear to Stephen Blackpool 
 and the stainless nobility of his cloyed utterances. 
 The crudeness or the homeliness of the dialectic 
 element does not argue its unfitness any way. 
 Some readers seem to think so ; but they are 
 wrong, and very gravely wrong. Our own brief 
 history as a nation, and our finding and founding 
 and maintaining of it, left our forefathers little 
 time indeed for the delicate cultivation of the 
 arts and graces of refined and scholarly attain- 
 ments. And there is little wonder, and great 
 blamelessness on their part, if they lapsed in 
 point of high mental accomplishments, seeing 
 their attention was so absorbed by propositions 
 looking toward the protection of their rude farm- 
 homes, their meager harvests, and their half- 
 stabled cattle from the dread invasion of the In- 
 dian. Then, too, they had their mothers and 
 their wives and little ones to protect, to clothe, 
 to feed, and to die for in this awful line of 
 duty, as hundreds upon hundreds did. These 
 sad facts are here accented and detailed not so 
 much for the sake of being tedious as to more 
 clearly indicate why it was that many of the truly 
 
104 DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 heroic ancestry of " our best people'' grew un- 
 questionably dialect of caste — not alone in speech, 
 but in every mental trait and personal address. 
 It is a grievous fact for us to confront, but many 
 of them wore apparel of the commonest, talked 
 loudly, and doubtless said " thisaway " and " that- 
 away," and " Watchy' doin' of?" and "Whur 
 y' goin' at ?" — using dialect even in their prayers 
 to Him who, in His gentle mercy, listened and 
 was pleased; and who listens verily unto this 
 hour to all like prayers, yet pleased; yea, haply 
 listens even to the refined rhetorical petitions of 
 those who are not pleased. 
 
 There is something more at fault than the lan- 
 guage when we turn from or flinch at it ; and, as 
 has been intimated, the wretched fault may be 
 skulkingly hidden away in the ambush of ostensi- 
 ble dialect — that type of dialect so copiously pro- 
 duced by its sole manufacturers, who, utterly stark 
 and bare of the vaguest idea of country life or 
 country people, at once assume that all their 
 " gifted pens" have to do is to stupidly misspell 
 every word ; vulgarly mistreat and besloven every 
 theme, however sacred; maim, cripple, and dis- 
 figure language never in the vocabulary of the 
 countryman — then smuggle these monstrosities of 
 either rhyme or prose somehow into the public 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 105 
 
 print that is to innocently smear them broadcast all 
 over the face of the country they insult. 
 
 How different the mind and method of the true 
 intrepreter. As this phrase goes down the man 
 himself arises — the type perfect — Colonel Richard 
 Malcom Johnston, who wrote "The Dukesbor- 
 ough Tales" — an accomplished classic scholar 
 and teacher, yet no less an accomplished master 
 and lover of his native dialect of middle Georgia. 
 He, like Dickens, permits his rustic characters to 
 think, talk, act and live, just as nature designed 
 them. He does not make the pitiable error of 
 either patronizing or making fun of them. He 
 knows them and he loves them ; and they know 
 and love him in return. Recalling Colonel John- 
 ston's dialectic sketches, with his own presentation 
 of them from the platform, the writer notes a 
 fact that seems singularly to obtain among all 
 true dialect writers, namely, that they are also 
 endowed with native histrionic capabilities : Hear, 
 as well as read, Twain, Cable, Johnston, Page, 
 Smith, and all the list, with barely an exception. 
 
 Did space permit, no better illustration of true 
 dialect sketch and characterization might here be 
 offered than Colonel Johnston's simple story of 
 " Mr. Absalom Billingslea," or the short and sim- 
 ple annals of his like quaint contemporaries, 
 
106 DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 "Mr. Bill Williams," and "Mr. Jonas Lively." 
 The scene is the country and the very little coun- 
 try town, with landscape, atmosphere, simplicity, 
 circumstance — all surroundings and conditions — 
 veritable — everything rural and dialectic, no less 
 than the simple, primitive, common, wholesome- 
 hearted men and women who so naturally live and 
 have their blessed being in his stories, just as in 
 the life itself. This is the manifest work of the 
 true dialect writer and expounder. In every de- 
 tail, the most minute, such work reveals the mas- 
 ter-hand and heart of the humanitarian as well as 
 artist — the two are indissolubly fused— and the re- 
 sult of such just treatment of whatever lowly 
 themes or characters we can but love and loyally 
 approve with all our human hearts. Such masters 
 necessarily are rare, and such ripe perfecting as is 
 here attained may be in part the mellowing result 
 of age and long observation, though it can but be 
 based upon the wisest, purest spirit of the man as 
 well as artist. 
 
 In no less excellence should the work of Joel 
 Chandler Harris be regarded : His touch alike is 
 ever reverential. He has gathered up the bruised 
 and broken voices and the legends of the slave, 
 and from his child-heart he has affectionately 
 yielded them to us in all their eerie beauty and 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 107 
 
 wild loveliness. Through them we are made to 
 glorify the helpless and the weak and to revel in 
 their victories. But, better, we are taught that 
 even in barbaric breasts there dwells inherently 
 the sense of right above wrong — equity above law 
 — and the One Unerring Righteousness Eternal. 
 With equal truth and strength, too, Mr. Harris 
 has treated the dialectic elements of the interior 
 Georgia countiy — -the wilds and fastnesses of the 
 "Moonshiners." His tale of " Teague Poteet," 
 of some years ago, was contemporaneous with the 
 list of striking mountain stories from that strong 
 and highly gifted Tennesseean, Miss Murfree, or 
 " Charles Egbert Craddock." In the dialectic 
 spirit her stories charm and hold us. Always 
 there is strangely mingled, but most naturally, the 
 gentle nature cropping out amid the most desper- 
 ate and stoical: the night scene in the isolated 
 mountain cabin, guarded ever without and within 
 from any chance down-swooping of the minions 
 of the red-eyed law ; the great man-group of gen- 
 tle giants, with rifles never out of arm's-reach, in 
 tender rivalry ranged admiringly around the crow- 
 ing, wakeful little boy-baby; the return, at last, 
 of the belated mistress of the house — the sister, to 
 whom all do great, awkward reverence. Jealous- 
 ly snatching up the babe and kissing it, she quer- 
 
108 DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 ulously demands why he has not long ago been 
 put to bed. "He 'lowed he wouldn't go," is the 
 reply. 
 
 Thomas Nelson Page, of Virginia, who wrote 
 "Meh Lady" — a positive classic in the Negro 
 dialect: his work is veritable — strong and pure 
 and sweet ; and as an oral reader of it the doubly 
 gifted author, in voice and cadence, natural utter- 
 ance, every possible effect of speech and tone, is 
 doubtless without rival anywhere. 
 
 Many more, indeed, than may be mentioned 
 now there are of these real benefactors and pre- 
 servers of the wayside characters, times, and cus- 
 toms of our e^er-shifting history. Needless is it 
 to speak here of the earlier of our workers in the 
 dialectic line — of James Russell Lowell's New 
 England " Hosea Bigelow," Dr. Eggleston's 
 " Hoosier School-Master," or the very rare and 
 quaint, bright prattle of "Helen's Babies." In 
 connection with this last let us very seriously in- 
 quire what this real child has done that Literature 
 should so persistently refuse to give him an abid- 
 ing welcome ? Since for ages this question seems 
 to have been left unasked, it may be timely now 
 to propound it. Why not the real child in Liter- 
 ature ? The real child is good enough (we all 
 know he is bad enough) to command our admir- 
 ing attention and most lively interest in real life, 
 
DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 109 
 
 and just as we find him "in the raw." Then why- 
 do we deny him any righteous place of recognition 
 in our Literature ? From the immemorial advent 
 of our dear old Mother Goose, Literature has been 
 especially catering to the juvenile needs and de- 
 sires, and yet steadfastly overlooking, all the time, 
 the very principles upon which Nature herself 
 founds and presents this lawless little brood of 
 hers — the children. It is not the children who are 
 out of order; it is Literature. And not only is 
 Literature out of order, but she is presumptuous ; 
 she is impudent. She takes Nature's children 
 and revises and corrects them till "their own 
 mother doesn't known them."' This is literal 
 fact. So, very many of us are coming to inquire, 
 as we've a right, why is the real child excluded 
 from a just hearing in the world of letters as he 
 has in the world of fact? For instance, what has 
 the lovely little ragamuffin ever done of sufficient 
 guilt to eternally consign him to the monstrous 
 penalty of speaking most accurate grammar all 
 the literary hours of the days of the years of his 
 otherwise natural life ? — 
 
 " Oh, mother, may I go to school 
 With brother Charles to-day ? 
 The air is very fine and cool ; 
 Oh, mother, say I may ! " — 
 
1 10 DIALECT IN LITERA TURE. 
 
 — Is this a real boy that would make such a request, 
 and is it the real language he would use ? No, we 
 are glad to say that it is not. Simply it is a libel, 
 in every particular, on any boy, however fondly 
 and exactingly trained by parents however zealous 
 for his overdecorous future. Better, indeed, the 
 dubious sentiment of the most trivial nursery jin- 
 gle, since the latter at least maintains the lawless 
 though wholesome spirit of the child-genuine.— 
 
 " Hink! Minx! The old witch winks-- 
 The fat begins to fry; 
 There's nobody home but Jumping Joan, 
 Father and mother and I." 
 
 Though even here the impious poet leaves the 
 scar of grammatical knowledge upon childhood's 
 native diction; and so the helpless little fellow is 
 again misrepresented, and his character, to all in- 
 tents and purposes, is assaulted and maligned out- 
 rageously thereby. 
 
 Now, in all seriousness, this situation ought not 
 to be permitted to exist, though to change it seems 
 an almost insurmountable task. The general pub- 
 lic, very probably, is not aware of the real gravity 
 of the position of the case as even unto this day it 
 exists. Let the public try, then, to contribute the 
 real child to the so-called Child Literature of its 
 
DIALECT IN LITERS JURE. 1 1 1 
 
 country, and have its real child returned as 
 promptly as it dare show its little tousled head in 
 the presence of that scholarly and dignified institu- 
 tion. Then ask why your real child has been 
 spanked back home again, and the wise mentors 
 there will virtually tell you that Child Literature 
 wants no real children in it, that the real child's 
 example of defective grammar and lack of elegant 
 deportment would furnish to its little patrician pa- 
 trons suggestions very hurtful indeed to their 
 higher morals, tendencies and ambitions. Then, 
 although the general public couldn't for the life of 
 it see why or how, and might even be reminded 
 that it was just such a rowdying child itself, and 
 that its father — the Father of his Country — was 
 just such a child; that Abraham Lincoln was just 
 such a lovable, lawless child, and yet was blessed 
 and chosen in the end for the highest service man 
 may ever render unto man, — all — all this argument 
 would avail not in the least, since the elegantly 
 minded purveyors of Child Literature can not pos- 
 sibly tolerate the presence of any but the refined 
 children- — the very proper children — the studiously 
 thoughtful, poetic children ; — and these must be 
 kept safe from the contaminating touch of our 
 rough-and-tumble little fellows in "hodden gray," 
 with frowzly heads, begrimed but laughing faces, 
 
112 DIALECT IN LITERATURE. 
 
 and such awful, awful vulgarities of naturalness, 
 and crimes of simplicity, and brazen faith and 
 trust, and love of life and everybody in it. All 
 other real people are getting into Literature ; and 
 without some real children along will they not soon 
 be getting lonesome, too? 
 

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