L. G.—"That's too much! How much is chicken?"
B.—"Chicken is 25 cents a pound" (impatiently).
L. G.—"Oh! 25 cents for chicken. Well my ma don't want any of them!"
B.—"Well, little girl, what do you want?"
L. G.—"Oh, I want an automobile, but my ma wants 5 cents' worth of liver!"
A SPRING IDYL ON "GRASS"
BY NIXON WATERMAN
Oh, the gentle grass is growing
In the vale and on the hill;
We can not hear it growing,
Still 'tis growing very still:
And in the spring it springs to life,
With gladness and delight;
I see it growing day by day,—
It also grows by night.
And, now, once more as mowers whisk
The whiskers from the lawn,
They'll rouse us from our slumbers,—
At the dawning of the dawn:
It saddens my poor heart to think
What we should do for hay,
If grass instead of growing up
Would grow the other way.
Its present rate of growing,
Makes it safe to say that soon,
'Twill cover all the hills at morn
And in the afternoon.
And I have often noticed
As I watched it o'er and o'er,
It grows, and grows, and grows, awhile,
And then it grows some more,—
If it keeps growing right along
It shortly will be tall;
It humps itself thro' strikes,
And legal holidays and all;
It's growing up down all the streets;
And clean around the square;
One end is growing in the ground,
The other in the air:
If the earth possest no grass
Methinks its beauty would be dead;
We'd have to make the best of it,
And use baled hay instead.
From "A Book of Verses," by permission of Forbes & Co., Chicago.