AY! it’s a limit, the way a guy has got to get through this life;
He gets in a scrape if he’s single, and it’s hell to get on with a wife.
I’m just like one of a thousand that are into a tangle now,
I’d like to get out of it, Gawd knows, yes, but really I don’t know how.
In two little rooms on Fourteenth street, things are away askew,
Two little brown kiddies their daddy meet, an’ a brown girl white clear through,
Wait at the door and wonder why I ain’t like I used to be,
While on my heart there’s an awful load, that I try not to let her see.
The Colonel says that we guys must go; we ain’t needed here no more;
Dredges now are doin’ the work that the shovels done before.
An’ I ain’t got a cent of the money saved; I sent it all to the wife,
Who went out West with a guy she loved; ’twas that one blighted my life.
Five years ago I landed here; I was broke an’ feelin’ sick,
An’ the brown girl took an’ loved me up, an’ stuck to me like a brick;
An’ now I find it an effort to stick to her likewise;
Say! any kind of a female is better than us male guys.
Say, lady! don’t you remember them words that Shakespeare said
About a feller’s sex settin’ boldly on his head?
Why didn’t Gawd make us different when He put us here below;
Why did He give me a conscience? That’s what I’d like to know.
There’s Loring, an’ Ives an’ Phelan, in the same sort of mess as me;
Loring is handsome an’ bad clear through, an’ he laughs an’ says it’s a spree.
He laughed last night when he came to the park, an’ sat with me on a bench,
An’ he said: “Cut out that mopin’, kid; she’s only a nigger wench.”
“But what about them kids?” says I, “ain’t they part of my flesh and blood?”
“It’s been that way with us guys,” says he, “since the time of the ark an’ flood.
If you take the bunch to New Orleans, you’ll all get landed in gaol
For a crime that ain’t no crime at all, an’ ye can’t get out on bail.
Leave her on Fourteenth street,” says he, with a laugh that was loud an’ rude,
“An’ some old Dutch guy will blow in some day an’ will take care of the whole darn brood.”
But I know that she’ll curse me if I go, an’ I know that them curses fall;
God knows in my life there’s enough of woe; an’ she’s human, after all.
THE FLIGHT OF THE MANLY ONES.
ORING and Ives and Phelan went off to Colon last night,
And the women on Fourteenth street are sad, and the kids are filled with fright!
At eight last evening Loring came to bid his child “good-bye”;
He picked her up and he kissed her, and you ought to hear him sigh.
“Gee! you’re a pretty kid,” says he, in a tone of voice that was sad;
“Your lips and your skin are mighty good; it’s a pity your hair is bad.”
Then he looked in the baby’s eyes a while, and he says in a voice of despair:
“I hate to leave this poor little child; there’s my mother’s image there!”
The brown one was crying to beat the band,
And Loring, he looked wild,
And says he to her, a kind of off-hand,
“Woman! look after your child!
This is no time for sentiment; bring the money you’ve kept for me;
And God help you if you have it spent,” says he, as he winked at me.
He counted the money out to her—five hundred and forty-five,
And says he, “If you divvy this up with a guy I’ll come and skin you alive.
Take the kid from this place of stench, for I’m coming back some day—
Not to see you, you doggone wench—to take my child away.”
Two Voodoos were sitting and looking on; they intended to give him some dope
That would make him sleep till the train had gone, After that there’d be little hope
That he’d ever wake to things again—that are wholesome and clean and good.
He’d thirst for low life without twinge of pain, if the Voodoos got dope to his blood.
Well, then we went out to Corozal, where the others were taking the train,
And a white girl waited for Loring there, and her tears fell down like rain.
He didn’t seem to mind it at all; in fact, he looked rather proud,
When a married woman ran up to him and kissed him before the crowd.
Then Phelan and Ives, in an awful fright, got into the train mighty quick,
For their women from Fourteenth street were there, and each had a gun and a brick.
Gee! it’s the limit, the way we guys will tamper with women’s lives,
When we have nothing in mind but to leave them behind, like Loring and Phelan and Ives.