He listened very docile like, an' hadn't much to say,
But what he did was vent'red in a satisfact'ry way;
He'd severed somewhat from his kin, an' sort o' lost the run,
But he recalled the Stebbinses, when mentioned, one by one;
An' takin' him inside an' out, our family scarcely owns
A relative more relishin' than Jeroboam Jones.
He's teacher in a Sunday-school, he told me, by the way,
Which has a room, above a store, that's open every day.
"For if," he says, "we come across a child that needs our care,
We cannot wait till Sunday comes—we join 'em then an' there.
An' if you want to see the way our worthy cause is run,
Come in an' take a little look—our 'social's' just begun."
The scholars hadn't come, as yet; the Superintendent, though,
Was sittin' at a table, like, an' bowed extremely low;
An' heard the praise on poor old me my cousin had to tell,
An' said he joyed to meet a friend of one he loved so well;
An' I talked back; an' for a time our converse did not cease—
A regular three-cornered gush of friendship, love, an' peace.
An' then he showed me how they run their "grab-bags" an' all such
(We have the same at home, you know, although not near so much);
An' then he had some val'ables on numbers that you saw,
With figures correspondin'ly, in envelopes, to draw;
I gin him fifty cents to help a cause I dearly hold,
An' drew a velvet hymn-book, with a clasp resemblin' gold!
My cousin pressed my hand with some congratulatin' jokes,
And said, "Ah me! the Stebbinses was always lucky folks!
But after all, their shrewdness is the thing that lets them win."
(Which made me proud, though I didn't see just where the shrewd came in.
But buyin' a five-dollar book at that unheard-of price,
An' helpin' of the cause meanwhile, was unsuspected nice.)
"TO MAKE FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS CLEAR, AN' HELP THE CHILDREN TOO."
Whereat the Superintendent said, "You're lucky, I allow;
I'll have to charge five dollars for a chance to draw here now."
Whereat my cousin Jeroboam remarked, "If 'tisn't wrong,
I'll buy a draw for Cousin Steb, to help the cause along."
I shook my head, but he would do't; an' sure as I'm alive,
I drawed a good ten-dollar bill for Cousin Jones's five!