“Alaskan Editor,” “Expatriated Amateur,” and various other suggestions were kindly offered by the boys, but were frowned down by the older members, who now called for the poem itself.
“One bright summer morning in early July
Our party assembled in Boston, to try
Of travels abroad an entirely new version
Afforded by Raymond & Whitcomb’s Excursion.”
“Hold on!” shouted Tom, who was privileged by his lameness. “That’s an ad. Herodotus Keats wants a free ticket next year. Who is he, I wonder?”
“Thomas,” remarked Fred, eying him severely through his glasses, “don’t display your ignorance of the great authors, nor interrupt with ribald comments. Go on, please, Mr. Selborne.”
“I know now, any way,” muttered the Irrepressible. The editor paid no further attention to him, but resumed the reading:
“The train was on hand in a place you all know well,
The Causeway Street depot marked “Boston & Lowell”;
It started, and cheers rose above lamentation
As, waving our hands, we rolled out of the station.
The daisies were white in the fields around Boston,
Like meadows in autumn with garments of frost on;
And fair were the skies over Merrimac’s stream,
As onward, still onward, with rattle and scream,
We flew o’er the rails ever faster and faster,
With never a thought of impending disaster.”
“But there wasn’t any disaster—unless the historian foresaw, in his prophetic soul, a certain bear”—
“Oh! let up, Ran. That’s poetical license. Macaulay couldn’t find anything else to rhyme with ‘faster.’”
“Arriving at Weirs, on Lake Winnepesaukee,
Our iron steed stopped, and became sort of balky,
Backed, snorted and started again with such speed
That some of us nearly ‘got left’ then, indeed!
At the Pemigewasset we halted to dine,
Then northward we sped to the Canada line,
Where Thomas was homesick until pretty soon he
Began to sing sadly of dear ‘Annie Rooney.’
In Montreal all the attractions were seen;
We dizzily whirled down the falls of Lachine
Till we hardly knew whether ’twas Memphremagog or
The turbulent rapids of far Caugnawauga.”
“Oh!” groaned Tom.