We’ll eat all at once all the stock on the place.”
He didn’t repine at Heaven’s plan, but he took things as they came;
That he always whistled-- ’twas Old Zip Coon,
And he whistled it all the afternoon with never a word of blame.
The gobbler pecked in the sunshine there,
With a tip-toe, tip-toe Nancy air, and ruffled like dancing dame;
Till it seemed to Ozy, whistling still To the ripity-rap of the turkey’s bill,
That the prim old gobbler was keeping time
To the sweep and the swing of the wordless rhyme:
And a Yankee notion was thereby born To Ozy Orr ere another morn.
As keen an old Yankee as ever you saw A bit of a platform he made out of tin,
With a chance for a kerosene lantern within; He took his old fiddle and rosined the bow And took the old turkey--and there was his show!
You don’t understand? Well, I’ll own up to you
The crowds that he gathered were mystified, too.
For he advertised there on his banner unfurled “A Jig-dancing Turkey--Sole one in the World.”
And the more the folks saw it, the more and the more
They flocked with their dimes, and jammed at the door;
For it really did seem that precocious old bird At sound of the fiddle was wondrously stirred. In stateliest fashion the dance would commence, Then faster and faster, with fervor intense, Until, at the end, with a shriek of the strings And a furious gobble and whirlwind of wings,
The turkey would side-step and two-step and spin,
And widely renowned, and regarded with awe,
Was the “Great Dancing Turkey of Ozy B. Orr.”
And the mortgage was paid by the old gobbler’s legs--
Now Ozy is heading up money in kegs. [Illustration: 0149]
He would calmly tuck beneath his chin The bulge of his cracked old violin,
He sawed while the turkey whacked the tin, the people they paid and came;
When he fiddled the measure of Old Zip Coon,
The gobbler would whirl in a rigadoon--or something about the same!
Was the worthless Bill, that brand of Sin;
And’twas Bill that made the turkey spin with the tip of the lantern flame;
The turkey made haste for to leave that spot,
Till it seemed that the gobbler was keeping time
To the sweep and the swing of the fiddle’s rhyme.
The gobbler gamboled with bow and beck! Does a notion pay? It doth--it doth!
They have always called him “Scratchy,” Ezry “Scratch” and “Uncle Scratch,”