I never knew I smiled at them when they were going by,
I guess it smiled all by itself and that’s the reason why;
I just look up from playing if it’s any one I know
And they most always smile at me and maybe say Hello;
And I can smile at any one, no matter who or where,
Because I’m just a little girl with lots of them to spare;
And Mamma said we ought to smile at folks, and if you do
Most always they feel better and they smile right back at you.
And when so many smile at me and ask me for a curl
It makes me think most everybody likes a little girl;
And once when I was playing and a man was going by
He smiled at me and then he rubbed some dust out of his eye,
Because it made it water so, and said he used to know
A little girl up in his yard who used to smile just so;
And then I asked why don’t she now and then he said “You see—”
And then he rubbed his eye again and only smiled at me.
A DOMESTIC RIPPLE
SOME days my Pa is thist so cross
’At Ma, she snaps him off an’ said:
“I guess your father must ’a’ got
Up on th’ wrong side of th’ bed.”
An’ ’en Pa says he’d like to eat
Thist bread, he would, in peace once more;
An’ Ma, she bu’sts out cryin’ nen
An’ Pa goes out an’ slams th’ door—
An’ ’en I git a spankin’!
Thist ’fore he gits his breakfast, Pa
He never hardly speaks to us,
An’ Ma, she says it shames her so
T’ have him go an’ make a fuss
Before th’ girl. Pa, he don’t care,
An’ ’en he says—“Th’ girl be——!”
An’ Ma says—“Oh, t’ think he’d swear
Before his child!” Th’ door gits slammed—
An’ ’en I git a spankin’!
An’ ’en, ’em days, th’ littlest things
I do ’ll almost drive her wild,
An’ she says “Goodness sakes alive!
Was ever such another child?”
An’ she says: “Do run out an’ play!”
An’ thist when I git started, nen
She hollers right at me this way:
“Willyum! You march right in again!”
An’ ’en I git a spankin’!
An’ Pa, he don’t come home to lunch
’Cuz Ma, she says he’s too ashamed
To face her after such a scene
An’ says she surely can’t be blamed
For Pa’s mean, ugly, hateful ways,
An’ Ma ain’t got no heart to eat,
Nen, thist ’cuz I want honey on
My bread, er jam, er sumpin sweet—
Why nen I git a spankin’!
An’ ’en, along ’bout supper time
Pa sneaks in thist th’ easiest
You ever see; an’ nen he looks
For Ma; an’ she’s th’ freeziest
’At ever was. An’ Pa, he’s got
Some candy an’ he says he’s ’shamed,
An’ fin’ly Ma says mebbe she
Was also partly to be blamed,
An’ ’en ’at ends my spankin’!
THE ADAMS’S BOYS
THE Adams’s children, they just romp and play
And fall out of trees in the carelessest way,
And might break their legs from the way that they fall,
But they get up laughing and not hurt at all,
’Cause boys’ bones are soft, so their grandfather said;
And John Quincy Adams, he stands on his head
And drinks from a dipper, and all over town
The boys will tell you how he drinks upside down.