DOUGHNUTS
I SEEK the high-class eating joint, when my old stomach gives a wrench, and there the waiters proudly point to bills of fare got up in French. I order this, and order that, in eagerness my face to feed, and oftentimes I break a slat pronouncing words I cannot read. And as I eat the costly greens, prepared by an imported cook, to other times and other scenes with reminiscent eyes I look. My mother never was in France, no foreign jargon did she speak, but how I used to sing and dance when she made doughnuts once a week! Oh, they were crisp and brown and sweet, and they were luscious and sublime, and I could stand around and eat a half a bushel at a time. The doughnuts that our mothers made! They were the goods, they were the stuff; we used to eat them with a spade and simply couldn’t get enough. And when I face imported grub, all loaded down with Choctaw names, I sigh and wish I had a tub of doughnuts, made by old-time dames. I do not care for fancy frills, but when the doughnut dish appears, I kick my hind feet o’er the thills, and whoop for joy, and wag my ears.
THE ILL WIND
THE cold wet rain kept sloshing down, and flooded yard and street. My uncle cried: “Don’t sigh and frown! It’s splendid for the wheat!” I slipped and fell upon the ice, and made my forehead bleed. “Gee whiz!” cried uncle, “this is nice! Just what the icemen need!” A windstorm blew my whiskers off while I was writing odes. My uncle said: “Don’t scowl and scoff—’twill dry the muddy roads!” If fire my dwelling should destroy, or waters wash it hence, my uncle would exclaim, with joy: “You still have got your fence!” When I was lying, sick to death, expecting every day that I must draw my final breath, I heard my uncle say, “Our undertaker is a jo, and if away you fade, it ought to cheer you up to know that you will help his trade.” And if we study uncle’s graft, we find it good and fair; how often, when we might have laughed, we wept and tore our hair! Such logic from this blooming land should drive away all woe; the thing that’s hard for you to stand, is good for Richard Roe.
APPROACH OF SPRING
THE spring will soon be here; the snow will disappear; the hens will cluck, the colts will buck, as will the joyous steer. How sweet an April morn! The whole world seems reborn; and ancient men waltz round again and laugh their years to scorn. And grave and sober dames forsake their quilting frames, and cut up rough, play blind man’s buff, and kindred cheerful games. The pastors hate to preach; the teachers hate to teach; they’d like to play baseball all day, or on the bleachers bleach. The lawyer tires of law; the windsmith rests his jaw; they’d fain forget the toil and sweat, and play among the straw. The spring’s the time for play; let’s put our work away, with joyous spiels kick up our heels, e’en though we’re old and gray. You see old Dobbin trot around the barnyard lot, with flashing eye and tail on high, his burdens all forgot. You see the muley cow that’s old and feeble now, turn somersaults and prance and waltz, and stand upon her brow. The rooster, old is he, and crippled as can be, yet on his toes he stands and crows “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” Shall we inspired galoots have less style than the brutes? Oh, let us rise and fill the skies with echoing toot-toots.
