She comforts all her mother's days,

And with her sweet, obedient ways

She makes her labor light:

So sweet to hear, so fair to see!

Oh, she is much too good for me,

That lovely Mary Hoyt.

She has my heart, sweet Mary Hoyt:

I'll e'en go sit again to-night

Beside her ironing board!

Ah, that flat-iron! It was while beneath her deft fingers it passed swiftly over the smoking linen, that "the iron entered his soul"; iron, we mean, of the nature from which Cupid forges his arrow-heads.