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[ CINDERELLA.]

Poor,pretty little thing she was,

The sweetest-faced of girls,

With eyes as blue as larkspurs,

And a mass of tossing curls;

But her step-mother had for her

Only blows and bitter words,

While she thought her own two ugly crows,

The whitest of all birds.

She was the little household drudge,

And wore a cotton gown,

While the sisters, clad in silk and satin,

Flaunted through the town.

When her work was done, her only place

Was the chimney-corner bench.

For which one called her “Cinderella,”

The other, “Cinder-wench.”

But years went on, and Cinderella

Bloomed like a wild-wood rose,

In spite of all her kitchen-work,

And her common, dingy clothes;

While the two step-sisters, year by year,

Grew scrawnier and plainer;

Two peacocks, with their tails outspread,