THE MYSTERY
Heard a rustle in the brush
Only yesternight;
Heard a rustle in the hush,
Somethin’ out of sight—
Jest a footfall on the ground,
Shakin’ of a tree;
But we argued all around
What the thing could be.
Jack, the stable-boy, he said
Likely ’twas a colt—
Farmer’s colt thet got its head,
Broke its halter holt.
Bill, the cookhouse flunkey, swore
’Twas a bear er cub
Huntin’ round the cookhouse door
Fer a snack of grub.
Pete, who likes to hunt when Fall
Comes around each year,
Said it wasn’t that at all—
Thet it was a deer.
Frank, who drives the two-ox pair,
Said they made him laff,
Said their colt er deer er bear
Simply was a caff.
So they set an’ argufied
What the thing could be;
Ev’ry fellah took a side,
Had a theory.
Jack he chinned it with the chaps,
Bill with all the boys;
Mac, who’s deef, he said perhaps
There wasn’t any noise.
What the rustle was about,
No one ever knew;
But one fact I figgered out
From that gabby crew:
People look with diff’rent eyes,
Hear with diff’rent ears;
That what closest to them lies
Ev’rything appears.
Ev’ry nation is the best
To the man from there,
Ev’ry state beats all the rest
When their sons compare.
Do you wonder at the lot
Of religious creeds?—
Each a special God has got
Fer his special needs.
Harps an’ music fer the gay,
Huntin’ fer the red;
Atheists expect to stay
Permanently dead;
Streets of sapphire fer the Jew;
Fer the weary, rest—
Each, accordin’ to his view,
Thinks his heaven best.
An’ I’m puzzled, I admit,
Puzzled at the maze—
Heaven, you kin figger it
Forty-seven ways:
Heaven with a street of gold;
With a jasper gate;
Heaven where the very old
Still must sit an’ wait.
If there are so many there,
There beyond the blue,
Heavens round an’ heavens square,
Gentile, Injun, Jew—
All thet I can do is trust,
Since they can’t agree,
When I lay me “dust to dust”
There’ll be one fer me.