It wasn't too much work for her in the days of long ago
To get a dinner ready for a dozen friends or so;
The mother never grumbled at the cooking she must do
Or the dusting or the sweeping, but she seemed to smile it through,
And the times that we were happiest, beyond the slightest doubt,
Were when good friends were coming and we stretched the table out.
We never thought, when we were young, to take our friends away
And entertain them at a club or in some swell cafe;
When mother gave a dinner, she would plan it all herself
And feed the people that she liked, the best things on the shelf.
Then one job always fell to me, for I was young and stout,
I brought the leaves to father when he stretched the table out.
That good old-fashioned table. I can see it still to-day
With its curious legs of varnished oak round which I used to play;
It wasn't much to look at, not as stylish or refined
Or as costly or as splendid as the oval, modern kind,
But it always had a welcome for our friends to sit about,
And though twenty guests were coming, we could always stretch it out.
I learned it from my mother—it is foolish pride to roam,
The only place to entertain your friends is right at home.
Just let them in by dozens, let them laugh and sing and play
And come to love and know them in the good old-fashioned way;
Home's the place for fun and friendship, home's the place where joy may shout,
And if you crowd our dining room, we'll stretch the table out.
The Dreamer
The road lay straight before him, but the by-paths smiled at him
And the scarlet poppies called him to the forests cool and dim,
And the song birds' happy chorus seemed to lure him further on;
'Twas a day of wondrous pleasure—but the day was quickly gone.
He could not resist the laughter and the purling of a brook
Any more than gray old sages can resist some dusty book,
And though stern-faced duty bade him march the highway straight ahead,
"The trees are better company than busy men," he said.
We wondered at his dreaming and his wanderings far astray,
But we were counting values by the gold and silver way,
And sometimes as I saw him gazing idly at the sky,
I fancied he had pleasures of a sort I couldn't buy.
I fancy he saw something in the clouds above the trees
Which the gold and glory seeker passes by and never sees,
And I think he gathered something from the woods and running streams
Which is just as good as money to the man of many dreams.