I'm gettin' on, I guess.I set on the piazza
An' hitch around with the sun —
Sometimes, mayhap, I take a nap,
Waitin' till school is done,
An' then I tell the children
The things I done in youth,
An' near as I can (as a venerable man)
I stick to the honest truth!
But the looks of them 'at listen
Seems sometimes to express
The remote idee that I'm gone – you see!
An' I am gettin' on, I guess.
I get up in the mornin',
An' nothin' else to do,
Before the rest are up and dressed
I read the papers through;
I hang 'round with the women
All day an' hear 'em talk,
An' while they sew or knit I show
The baby how to walk;
An' somehow, I feel sorry
When they put away his dress
An' cut his curls ('cause they're like a girl's) —
I'm gettin' on, I guess!
Sometimes, with twilight round me,
I see (or seem to see)
A distant shore where friends of yore
Linger and watch for me;
Sometimes I've heered 'em callin'
So tenderlike 'nd low
That it almost seemed like a dream I dreamed,
Or an echo of long ago;
An' sometimes on my forehead
There falls a soft caress,
Or the touch of a hand – you understand —
I'm gettin' on, I guess.
MINNIE LEE
Writing from an Indiana town a young woman asks: "Is the enclosed poem worth anything?"
We find that the poem is as follows:
She has left us, our own darling —
And we never more shall see
Here on earth our dearly loved one —
God has taken Minnie Lee.
Her heart was full of goodness
And her face was fair to see
And her life was full of beauty —
How we miss our Minnie Lee!
But her work on earth is over
And her spirit now is free
She has gone to live in heaven —
Shall we weep for Minnie Lee?
Would we call our angel darling
Back again across the sea?
No! but sometime up in heaven
We will meet loved Minnie Lee.
To the question as to whether this poem is worth anything we chose to answer in verse as follows:
Sweet poetess, your poetry
Is bad as bad can be,
And yet we heartily deplore
The death of Minnie Lee.
It would have pleased us better
If, in His wisdom, He
Had taken you, sweet poetess,
Instead of Minnie Lee.
Your turn will come, however,
And swift and sure 'twill be
If you continue sending
Your rhymes on Minnie Lee.
From this we hope you will gather
A dim surmise that we
Don't take much stock in poems
Concerning Minnie Lee.
LIZZIE
I wonder ef all wimmin air
Like Lizzie is when we go out
To theaters an' concerts where
Is things the papers talk about.
Do other wimmin fret and stew
Like they wuz bein' crucified —
Frettin' a show or a concert through,
With wonderin' ef the baby cried?
Now Lizzie knows that gran'ma's there
To see that everything is right,
Yet Lizzie thinks that gran'ma's care
Ain't good enuf f'r baby, quite;
Yet what am I to answer when
She kind uv fidgets at my side,
An' every now and then;
"I wonder ef the baby cried?"
Seems like she seen two little eyes
A-pinin' f'r their mother's smile —
Seems like she heern the pleadin' cries
Uv one she thinks uv all the while;
An' she's sorry that she come,
'An' though she allus tries to hide
The truth, she'd ruther stay to hum
Than wonder ef the baby cried.
Yes, wimmin folks is all alike —
By Lizzie you kin jedge the rest.
There never was a little tyke,
But that his mother loved him best,
And nex' to bein' what I be —
The husband of my gentle bride —
I'd wisht I wuz that croodlin' wee,
With Lizzie wonderin' ef I cried.
OUR LADY OF THE MINE
The Blue Horizon wuz a mine us fellers all thought well uv,
And there befell the episode I now perpose to tell uv;
'Twuz in the year of sixty-nine – somewhere along in summer —
There hove in sight one afternoon a new and curious comer;
His name wuz Silas Pettibone – an artist by perfession,
With a kit of tools and a big mustache and a pipe in his possession;
He told us, by our leave, he'd kind uv like to make some sketches
Uv the snowy peaks, 'nd the foamin' crick, 'nd the distant mountain stretches;
"You're welkim, sir," sez we, although this scenery dodge seemed to us
A waste uv time where scenery wuz already sooper-floo-us.
All through the summer Pettibone kep' busy at his sketchin' —
At daybreak, off for Eagle Pass, and home at nightfall, fetchin'
That everlastin' book uv his with spider lines all through it —
Three-Fingered Hoover used to say there warn't no meanin' to it —
"God
