He chased and he bradded him all’round the yard,
Till’Lish fairly screamed, as he dodged like a
“For heaven’s sake, stranger, let’s play I hain’t ox.”
Gile bashfully stammered, “Why,’course ye are not!
But ye’ll have to excuse me--I sort o’ forgot!”
With a twisted smile ‘Lish looked at Gile,
Then he lifted one hand from the place where he smarted;
“Ye’re hired,” said he; “I reckin I’m started!”
His mouth is pooched and solemn and he’ll never squeeze a smile,
He’s yeller ’em saffron bitters’cause he’s col- ored so by bile;
No organ in his system seems to run the way it should,
--He never has a hearty shake or says a word of good.
He’ll soften, though, a crumb or so if money’s to be lent
And some poor strugglin’ devil comes to time with ten per cent.
He is flingin’ and is dingin’ first at this and then at that,
And to ev’ry reputation gives a cuff or kick or slat;
Pretty lately he was spewin’ sland’rous gossip he had heard,
And our minister was passin’. Wal, the elder he was stirred
And he says, “Ah, Brother Bowler, if you’d lived in Jesus’ time
When they brought to him the woman whom they’d taken in her crime,
That story in the Scriptures would have took a diff’rent tone,
For I s’picion if you’d been there you’d’a’ up and thrown the stone.
Yes, I reckon that the woman would have sartin been a goner,
For you’d thrown the rock--and that hain’t all! You’d’a’ thrown one with a corner!”
Wal, ye’d think a dig of that sort would have shamed him ha’f to death,
But, Land o’ Goshen, neighbor,--hain’t no mor- tifyin’ Seth!
--Jest a waste of breath To jab at Uncle Seth,
He’s holler where the soul should be--hain’t got no human peth.
He’s deef to ev’ry cry of want and don’t know what is meant,
But--bet he’ll hear for ha’f a mile the whisper, “Ten per cent!”
It took a lot of practicin’ to work his hearin’ down
To where he’s never bothered by the troubles in our town.
He never hears the sorrows of some woman who is left
With orphans and a morgidge’bout a thousand times her heft.
He hain’t the one that worries when she says she cannot pay,
The morgidge holds her anchored--the farm can’t git away.
Upon the shattered door-steps of his racked old tenements
He crowds the wolf of hunger when he goes to git his rents.
But he never hears the wailin’ of the troubled folks within,