THE LAW ’GAINST SPIKE-SOLE BOOTS
It’s a case of scuff in your stocking-feet, from
Seboomook down, my hearties;
Sling your spikers around your neck and swear
your way to town.
The dudes that we sent to legislate, and figger
at balls and parties,
Haye tinkered the laws to suit themselves, and
they’ve done us good and brown.
There’s a howl, you bet, from the Medway dam
across to the Caucmogummac,
For the laws came up in the tote-team mail, and
we’ve got the new statoots,
And of all the things that was ever planned to
give us a gripe in the stomach,
The worst is the corker that t’runs us down for
a-wearin’ our old calked boots.
You can’t chank on to a hotel floor,
You’ve got to leave calked boots at the door.
They make ye peel your hucks in the street
And walk to the bar in your stocking-feet.
It’s a blank of a note that a man with chink
Can’t prance to the rail and get his drink,
But it’s five and costs if ye mar the paint,
And ten if the feller that makes complaint
Gets mad at a playful push in the eyes
And goes into court with a lot of lies.
It’s ten if ye sliver a steam-bo’t’s deck
—There ain’t no argue—it’s right in the neck.
And they soak you, too, on the railroad train;
—Why, there’s hardly a loggin’ crew in Maine
But what has claimed, as a nat’ral right,
A chance to holler and heller and fight,
And knock the stuffin’ out of the seats,
Rip off the blinds and club with the cleats.
But now if the bloomin’ brakeman talks,
And you vaccinate him once with calks;
If you feel like a man with a royal flush
And, jest for the joke of it, rip some plush,
Oh, they take that law and they peel you sore;
You pay for the damage, and ten plunks more.
’Tain’t much like the days when we had some
rights,
When we roosters sharpened our spurs in fights,
When never a crowd put up galoots
That could scrap with the fellers with spike-sole
boots.
It’s a case of step to the wangan camp, and buy
some partent leathers;
And go a-snoopin’ along to town like a dude on
his weddin’-trip;
And the only thing you can do to a guy is to tickle
his nose with feathers,
And curl in your seats in the smokin’-car when
a drummer gives you lip.
There was fun, by gee, in the good old days
when we whooped ’er into the city,
And you trailed our way by the slivers we left
from the railroad down to the dives,
And we owned the town where we left our cash;
and now it’s a thunderin’ pity
If all of a sudden you’ve grown too good for the
boys who are off the drives.
Oh, make the laws, go make the laws with your
derned old Legislature,
Jest give us orders to wear plug hats and come
down in full dress suits.
We’ll wear the togs; but give us spikes, or
you’ve busted the laws of nature,
For angels can just as well shed wings as a
driver his spike-sole boots.