OUR HOME FOLKS

Listlessly threshed in a careless court

The poor, plain tale of a home was told,

Furnishing food for the lawyers’ sport

And a jest at the fond and the foolish old.

The counsel said as he winked an eye,

“Deeded the farm to their only son;

And after’twas deeded they didn’t die

Quite as quick as they should have done.”

Drearily dragged the homely case,

Petty and mean in all its parts;

Quest thro’ the law for an old home place,

—Put never a word of two broken hearts.

Only a suit where the son and wife

Pledged themselves when they coaxed the

deed,

To comfort the close of the old folks’ life:

—Only another case where greed

Sneered at the toil of the long, hard years

Of martyrdom to the hoe and axe,

Writ in wrinkles and etched in tears

And told in the curve of the old bent backs,

—Bent in the strife with the rocky soil,

When the grinding work was never done,

With just one rift in the cloud of toil:

—‘Twas all for the sake of their only son.

Simply a tedious legal maze

With neighbors stirring the thing for sport,

too.

And loungers eyeing with listless gaze

This queer old couple dragged to court.

Meekly they would have granted greed

All that it sought for—all its spoil;

Little they valued a forfeit deed,

Nor selfishly reckoned their years of toil.

Heartsick they while the lawyers urged,

Mute when the law vouchsafed their prayer;

—Courts soothe not such grief as surged

In the hearts of the old folks trembling there.

What though the jury’s word restored

The walls and roof of the old home place?

Would it give them back the blessed hoard

Of trust that knew no son’s disgrace?

Would it give them back his boyhood smiles,

His boyhood love, their simple joy,

Would it heal the wounds of these afterwhiles,

And make him again their own dear boy?

Would it soothe the smart of the cruel words,

Of sullen looks and cold neglect?

And dull the taunts that pierced like swords

And slashed where the wielders little recked?

No; Justice gives the walls and roof,

—To palsied hands a cancelled deed,

Rebuking with a stern reproof

A son’s unfilial, shameless greed.

But love that made that old home warm,

And hope that made all labor sweet,

The glow of peace that shamed the storm

And melted on the pane the sleet;

And faith and truth and loving hearts

And tender trust in fellow men—

Ah, these, my friend, no lawyers’ arts

Can give again, can give again.