I scorn, with the unutterable scorn of the despiser of pettiness, to take a mean advantage of him.
He writes, he sells, he is read (more or less); why then should I rack my brains and my rhyming dictionary? I will see the public hanged first!
I sing of America, of the United States, of the stars and stripes of Oshkosh, of Kalamazoo, and of Salt Lake City.
I sing of the railroad cars, of the hotels, of the breakfasts, the lunches, the dinners, and the suppers;
Of the soup, the fish, the entrées, the joints, the game, the puddings and the ice-cream.
I sing all—I eat all—I sing in turn of Dr. Bluffem's Antibilious Pills.
No subject is too small, too insignificant, for Nature's poet.
I sing of the cocktail, a new song for every cocktail, hundreds of songs, hundreds of cocktails.
It is a great and a glorious land! The Mississippi, the Missouri, and a million other torrents roll their waters to the ocean.
It is a great and glorious land! The Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Rockies (see atlas for other mountain ranges too numerous to mention) pierce the clouds!