The Scoutmaster
There isn't any pay for you, you serve without reward;
The boys who tramp the fields with you but little could afford;
And yet your pay is richer far than men who toil for gold,
For in a dozen different ways your service shall be told.
You'll read it in the faces of a troop of growing boys,
You'll read it in the pleasure of a dozen manly joys;
And down the distant future—you will surely read it then,
Emblazoned through the service of a band of loyal men.
Five years of willing labor and of brothering a troop;
Five years of trudging highways, with the Indian cry and whoop;
Five years of camp fires burning, not alone for pleasure's sake,
But the future generation which these boys are soon to make.
They have no gold to give you, but when age comes on to you
They'll give you back the splendid things you taught them how to do;
They'll give you rich contentment and a thrill of honest pride
And you'll see your nation prosper, and you'll all be satisfied.
The Way of a Wife
She wasn't hungry, so she said. A salad and a cup of tea
Was all she felt that she could eat, but it was different with me.
"I'm rather hungry," I replied: "if you don't mind, I think I'll take
Some oysters to begin with and a good old-fashioned sirloin steak."
Now wives are curious in this; to make the statement blunt and straight,
There's nothing tempts their appetites like food upon another's plate;
And when those oysters six appeared she looked at them and said to me,
"Just let me try one, will you, dear?" and right away she swallowed three.