Little Sunbeam
She was sweet and soft and clinging, and he always found her singing, when he came home from his labors as the night was closing in; she was languishing and slender, and her eyes were deep and tender, and he simply couldn't tell her that her coffee was a sin. Golden hair her head was crowning; she was fond of quoting Browning, and she knew a hundred legends of the olden, golden time; and her heart was full of yearning for the Rosicrucian learning, and he simply couldn't tell her that the beefsteak was a crime. She was posted on Pendennis, and she knew the songs of Venice, and he listened to her prattle with an effort to look pleased; and she liked the wit of Weller—and he simply couldn't tell her that the eggs he had for breakfast had been laid by hens diseased. So she filled his home with beauty, and she did her wifely duty, did it as she understood it, and her conscience didn't hurt, when dyspepsia boldly sought him, and the sexton came and got him, and his tortured frame was buried 'neath a wagon-load of dirt. O, those marriageable misses, thinking life all love and kisses, mist and moonshine, glint and glamour, stardust borrowed from the skies! Man's a gross and sordid lummix—men are largely made of stomachs, and the songs of all the sirens will not take the place of pies!
The Flag
Bright-hued and beautiful, it floats upon the summer air; and every thread of it denotes the love that's woven there; the love of veterans whose tread has sounded on the fields of red; and women old, who mourn their dead, but mourn without despair. Bright-hued and beautiful, it courts caresses of the breeze; and, straining at its staff it sports, in flaunting ecstasies; and other flags, that once were gay, long, long ago were laid away, and many men, whose heads are gray, are thinking now of these. Serene and beautiful it waves, the flag our fathers knew; in Freedom's sunny air it laves, and gains a brighter hue; and may it still the symbol be of all that makes a nation free; still may we cherish Liberty, and to our God be true.