Well, Wes ain't much at institutes;
Don't like to make a public talk,
And demonstrate with board and chalk.
No, he ain't much on sich disputes;
But Wes at school gits down and roots:
Up here Wes Banks is jist a wag,
With striped candy in a bag.
Old Wes is poor as money goes,
But rich in love and charity;
His heart goes out in sympathy
To barefoot boy with bleeding toes,
And girls in torn and tattered clothes;
And with his heart goes Wes's coin,
To heal the wound and gird the loin.
And this is why tonight I rise
To speak how Wesly Bank's life
Through forty years of schoolroom strife
By living truth has conquered lies,
And made his students good and wise:
You can't size Wes by looks or speech,
No more than some by what they preach.
PHILOSOPHY AT A BANQUET
Old Socrates who thought he knew
A philosophic thing or two,
Believed that man was made to walk
Or lounge about the streets and talk
Of life and death and virtues true,
And what a fellow ought to do;
While poor Xantippe, so I'm told,
Remained at home to drudge and scold.
But Epicurus seemed to think
That man was made to eat and drink,
A doctrine quite as orthodox,
I sometimes think, as old man Soc's;
For what philosophy's complete
That can not take an hour to eat?
I like old Socry, to be sure,
But here I'm just an Epicure.