FARMER WHIPPLE.—BACHELOR.
It's a mystery to see me—a man o' fifty-four,
Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more—
A-lookin' glad and smilin'! And they's none o' you can say
That you can guess the reason why I feel so good to-day!
I must tell you all about it! But I'll have to deviate
A little in beginning so's to set the matter straight
As to how it comes to happen that I never took a wife—
Kind o' "crawfish" from the Present to the Springtime of my life!
I was brought up in the country: Of a family of five—
Three brothers and a sister—I'm the only one alive,—
Fer they all died little babies; and 'twas one o' Mother's ways,
You know, to want a daughter; so she took a girl to raise.
The sweetest little thing she was, with rosy cheeks, and fat—
We was little chunks o' shavers then about as high as that!
But someway we sort o' suited-like! and Mother she'd declare
She never laid her eyes on a more lovin' pair
Than we was! So we growed up side by side fer thirteen year',
And every hour of it she growed to me more dear!—
W'y, even Father's dyin', as he did, I do believe
Warn't more affectin' to me than it was to see her grieve!
I was then a lad o' twenty; and I felt a flash o' pride
In thinkin' all depended on me now to pervide
Fer Mother and fer Mary; and I went about the place
With sleeves rolled up—and workin', with a mighty smilin' face.—
Fer sompin' else was workin'! but not a word I said
Of a certain sort o' notion that was runnin' through my head,—
"Someday I'd mayby marry, and a brother's love was one
Thing—a lover's was another!" was the way the notion run!
I remember onc't in harvest, when the "cradle-in'" was done—
When the harvest of my summers mounted up to twenty-one—
I was ridin' home with Mary at the closin' o' the day—
A-chawin' straws and thinkin', in a lover's lazy way!
And Mary's cheeks was burnin' like the sunset down the lane:
I noticed she was thinkin', too, and ast her to explain
Well—when she turned and kissed me, with her arm around me—law!
I'd a bigger load o' heaven than I had a load o' straw!