WHEN FATHER SPANKED ME
My Father larruped me, and yet
I could but note his eyes were wet,
When lying there across his knee
I got what he had had for me—
It seemed to fill him with regret.
"It hurt me worse than you," he said,
When later on I went to bed,
And I—the truth would not be hid—
Replied, "I'm gug-gug-glad it did!"
There were other verses written as I grew older that, while I do not regard them as masterpieces, I nevertheless think compare favorably with a great deal of the alleged poetry that has crept into print of late years. A trifle dashed off on a brick with a piece of charcoal one morning shortly after my hundredth birthday, comes back to me. The original I regret to say was lost through the careless act of one of my cousins, who flung it at a pterodactyl as it winged its flight across our meadows some years after. I reproduce it from memory.