Mind last time 'at Pap was ailin'
With a misery in his side,
And had hobbled in the kitchen—
Jest the day before he died,—
Laury Jane she ups and tells him,
"Pap, you're pale as pale kin be—
Hain't ye 'feard them-air cowcumbers
Hain't good fer ye?" And says he,
"Shet up, and eat yer vittels!"
Well! I've saw a-many a sorrow,—
Forty year', through thick and thin;
I've got best,—and I've got wors'ted,
Time and time and time ag'in!—
But I've met a-many a trouble
That I hain't run onto twice,
Haltin'-like and thinkin' over
Them-air words o' Pap's advice:
"Shet up, and eat yer vittels!"
ROMANCIN'
I' b'en a-kindo' "musin'," as the feller says, and I'm
About o' the conclusion that they hain't no better time,
When you come to cipher on it, than the times we ust to know
When we swore our first "dog-gone-it" sorto' solum-like and low!
You git my idy, do you?—Little tads, you understand—
Jest a-wishin' thue and thue you that you on'y wuz a man.—
Yit here I am, this minit, even sixty, to a day,
And fergettin' all that's in it, wishin' jest the other way!
I hain't no hand to lectur' on the times, er dimonstrate
Whare the trouble is, er hector and domineer with Fate,—
But when I git so flurried, and so pestered-like and blue,
And so rail owdacious worried, let me tell you what I do!—
I jest gee-haw the hosses, and onhook the swingle-tree,
Whare the hazel-bushes tosses down theyr shadders over me;
And I draw my plug o' navy, and I climb the fence, and set
Jest a-thinkin' here, i gravy! tel my eyes is wringin'-wet!
Tho' I still kin see the trouble o' the presunt, I kin see—
Kindo' like my sight wuz double—all the things that ust to be;
And the flutter o' the robin and the teeter o' the wren
Sets the willer-branches bobbin' "howdy-do" thum Now to Then!