I wouldn’t have Ebenezer know,
Or Parson, for all creation,
But I don’t feel right unless I’m dressed
In the very latest fashion.
There’s sister Thomson, a good old maid,
It’s many a hint she’s given,
I’d feel more at home in Vanity Fair
Than I would in the courts of heaven.
She vexes me with her saintly ways,
I never need try to please her,
And I can guess at the reason too,
She wanted my Ebenezer.
“She’s delicate,” she said to him once
When he was at first my lover,
“No sort for a farmer lad to choose,
Sakes alive! there’s nothing of her.”
“She won’t stand life’s toil and turmoil long!”
She says of late, so regretful,
Well, she may get Ebenezer yet
For all men are so forgetful.
But never mind, I went to the fair,
I wish, my dear, you had been there,
For I know you would never forget
Such pretty sights as were seen there.
Now, since I saw the marvel myself,
I know you’ll surely believe it,
They’re fooling ’round with the lightning grim,
Have made a plan to deceive it.
Just think of taking some bits of steel,
And a rod that’s far from pliant,
To put on the roof of a house or barn,
That it can glare ’round defiant.
Ebenezer fancied it, I know,
And wanted to make the bargain,
But kind of dreaded what I would say,
And also good elder Largain.
“’Twould be right pleasant” he said to me,
“When the storm was at its labors,
To have something standing up like that
To scare it off to the neighbors.”