There’s perpetual motion!” and pallid and faint
He fell prone and dying. They lifted him up
And his eyes, glazed with death, looked their last on that pup.
And through the dark shade of mortality’s fog
He gasped, “All you need is the right kind of dog.”
Though critics might carp and his rivals throw stones
Was a spinster, spinner-weaver of merited re- nown;
As a fact beyond disputing there was never any suiting
Like the suiting that was made by Spinster Brown.
She raised the wool she made it of, she even raised the sheep,
She fed ’em on the toughest straw the hired man could reap
She spun the thread with double-twist and made a warp and woof
So tarnal tough it really seemed’twas almost bullet-proof.
And when the cloth was shrunk and dyed and ready for a suit
The men in town would almost fight, they’d get in such dispute
Concerning who had spoken first--the farthest in advance--
And therefore had the prior claim on Aunt Jemimy’s pants.
The cloth that folks make nowadays is slimpsy, sleazy stuff;
It’s colored up in fairish style and fashionable enough!
But blame the goods! It’s made to sell--it isn’t made to wear--
These trousers here I’ve worn five year, and that is merely fair.
But when you bought a cut of cloth of Aunt Jemimy’s weave,
You got some stuff to last you through, you’d better just believe!
Why, ’bout the time that modern pants are get- ting worn and thin
A pair of Aunt Jemimy’s pants were scarcely broken in.
I’ve got a pair up attic now, made forty years ago
They’re just as tough as iron still and Time has made no show.
They’ve stood the brunt of honest work and dulled the tooth of moth,
And there they stand, as stiff’s a slab, good, plain, old-fashioned cloth.
And so I think it’s only right that tribute should be paid
To those old sturdy pioneers--the pants Je- mimy made.
The day I first put on those pants I held a break-up plough--
The farmers of these later days don’t have such wrassles now;
I drove six oxen on ahead, a pretty hefty team,
For farming in those old, old days took mus- cle, grit and steam;
You didn’t stop for rocks and stumps, nor dodge and skive and skip,
Or else you’d have to lug your meals on ev’ry furrow’s trip,
And so the only thing to do was make the oxen tread
And hold the ploughshare deep and true, and plunk ’er straight ahead.