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