BALLAD OF BENJAMIN BRANN
Oh, a positive man—a positive man,
So the people discovered, was Benjamin Brann.
With his household and neighbors and children
and hoss
Old Brann allowed he would always be boss.
And the most of the people they’d ruther kow-
tow
To his notions than live in the midst of a row.
And whenever you’d see in a faint-hearted
crowd,
A man who was hollerin’ ’specially loud,
You could calculate suttin that positive man
Was the uncontradicted old Benjamin Brann.
For after a while all the folks stood in awe
Of the roar of his voice and the build of his
jaw;
He was lookin’ for trouble and carried a chip
And chance for a tussle he never let slip;
He hated to think that the world could still go
When he stood at one side and kept hollerin’
“whoa!”
One day he was teamin’ his oxen to town;
He set on the cart tongue., his feet hangin’
down.
And bein’ a positive kind of a chap,
—Pokin’ out o’ his way for the sake of a
scrap—
Whenever he noticed a boulder or stump
He’d gee. and ride over the critter ker-bump!
But it happened one boulder that he came
across
Gave Benjamin’s ox-cart too lively a toss;
He was under the broad-tired wheels, s’r. before
He’d gathered his voice for his usual roar.
But just as the ox-cart rolled over him—oh,
You’d a-fallen down stunned at the way he
yelled “whoa!”
’Twas so loud and so threat’nin’ that Brindle
and Haw
Who bowed to that voice as their Gospel and
Law
Were so eager to stop that they backed, s’r,
and then
The wheel it rolled over the old man again.
There’s a moral to this as you notice, no doubt,
But I haven’t the patience to ravel it out.
I’ll say to reformers and dogmatists, though,
It’s safest to holler a moderate “whoa!”