The Gold-Digger’s Lament.
I am going far away from my creditors just now,
I ain’t got the tin to pay ’em, and they’re kicking up a row;
There’s the sheriff running after me with pockets full of writs,
And my tailor’s vowing vengeance, he swears he’ll give me fits.
There’s no room for speculation, and the mines ain’t worth a flam,
And I ain’t one of those lucky coves that works for Uncle Sam;
Whichever way I turn I am sure to meet a dun,
“So I think the best thing I can do is just to cut and run.”
I wish those “tarnal critters” that wrote home about the gold,
Was in the place the Scriptures say is never very cold;
They told you of the heaps of dust and lumps so very big,
But they never said a single word how hard you had to dig.
I went up to the mines and help’d to turn a stream,
Got trusted on the strength of that delusive golden dream;
But when the river we turn’d, we found it would not do,
And we who damm’d the river our creditors did sue.
I am going far away, but I don’t know where I’ll go,
’Twont do to turn homeward now, they’d laugh at me I know,
For I told them when I left I was going to make my pile,
But if they could only see mine now I rather guess they’d smile.
If of these United States I was the President,
No man who owed another should ever pay a cent;
And he who dunn’d another should be banish’d far away,
For attention to the pretty girls is all a man should pay.