She looked like a picture standing there, A-smoothing her soft hair down, It made me feel hateful, just to know I was homely, old, and brown. It vexed me just to look at her hands, So dimpled, an’ soft, an’ white-- I took Mr. Sammie to my room An’ told him it wasn’t right.
“She is no worker,” I said to him, “An’ drones are bad in a hive,” He laughed, “Oh we are a sleepy lot, Daisy will keep us alive!” “I know how ’twill be,” I said to him, She’ll want new things every day In machinery, to do up the work In the quick new-fangled way.
“But I won’t have it,” I said to him, “I have my way of going, An’ it’s girls that can’t do anything That want to do the showing.” He took it good--thinks I to myself I’ll finish while I’m in it, “There’s one thing, Sammie, I’ve never done, An’ I’m old now to begin it.
I’m old to wait on your lady wife, An’ stick to it day by day, An’ listen to high-falutin’ talk, An’ feel I’m just in the way. An’ another thing,” I said to him, Then stopped, an’ got red an’ hot, “You needn’t think your babies I’ll mind, Because I tell you I’ll not.”
I wish you could have heard the boy laugh, He shook the things on the shelf, “The dear little mammie, shan’t be ’bused” He said, “I’ll mind ’em myself.” All this talk I tell just to show What a fickle thing I am, An’ how little my words really meant When I said all this to Sam.
It was only some four years ago, An’ stowed in the big back hall There’s machines for almost everything, Leaning their backs to the wall. My daughter-in-law ’tends to it all-- A good stout girl at her hand-- If I say it myself, you can’t find Better kept house in the land.
The books, an’ papers, an’ flowers seem Part of her every-day life, An’ no doctor can ’tend to a sprain Better than our Sammie’s wife. Now, I like to sit here in my chair An’ watch her happy an’ free, An’ I like--yes, I’ll own up--I like Baby to climb on my knee.
Poor old father is sillier yet, A slave to three-year-old Jim, My, he grins an’ looks proud as can be Because the boy looks like him! Oh, we all have our worries I know, We find each blemish an’ flaw, But there’s one perfect thing in this world-- Sam’s wife, _my daughter-in-law_.
My niece from Boston, Minerva Bleak, So learned they call her Madam, With all her ’ologies, French and Greek, With all the queer things she styles antique, Came to see me, an’ Adam.