1 
 
 X 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 I UNIVERSITY OF 
 V 
 
I 11 wear Arcturus for a bosom pin. 
 
 TOPEKA, KANSAS: 
 
 KELLAM BOOK AND STATIONERY Co., PUBLISHERS. 
 
MAIN 
 
 COPYRIGHTED, 1889, BY T. J. KELLAM. 
 
 PRESS OP 
 
 GEO. W. CRANE & CO., 
 TOPEKA. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 O er sunny Kansas 
 
 Some commercial Cadmus, 
 
 In days unknown, 
 
 The teeth of golden dragons must 
 
 have sown; 
 
 For when the prairies 
 Feel the breath of summer, 
 
 The trowels ring, 
 
 And from the soil the "burnished 
 cities spring. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FAOB. 
 
 PREFACE, 3 
 
 THE WASHERWOMAN S SONG, 9 
 
 OH D, .11 
 
 KRITERION, 13 
 
 THE FISHER MAIDEN, 15 
 
 POLITICS, 16 
 
 SHADOW, 17 
 
 THE HoMffipATHic DOCTOR , ... 14 
 
 THE SUNSET MARMATON, 18 
 
 A SEA-RIOUS STORY, 20 
 
 TARPEIA 21 
 
 THE AZTEC CITY, 24 
 
 THE KANSAS HERDER, 2ti 
 
 THE KANSAS OCTOBER, 27 
 
 BLUE BIRD OF NOVEMBER, 2.S 
 
 OEESE AND CRANES, 31 
 
 FAILURE, 33 
 
 QUESTION, 35 
 
 NEWSPAPER LOCAL, 30 
 
 GRANGER S TEXT, 37 
 
 SERENADE, 38 
 
 DECORATION DAY, 30 
 
 THE PHOTO-GRAPH-U-IST, 43 
 
 BLAINE OF MAINE, 45 
 
 MINNESONG, 4(5 
 
 DEFAULTER, 47 
 
 PASS, 49 
 
 NEOPHYTE, 49 
 
 PROTEST, -.... 50 
 
 BIRD SONG, 51 
 
 THE CHILD OF FATE, 54 
 
 IOLINE, .55 
 
 SPUING CHICKEN, 59 
 
 FRAUDS, 60 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE, 61 
 
 WHIST, 64 
 
 QUIVERA KANSAS, 64 
 
 PRINTERS INK, 67 
 
 THE REAL, 68 
 
 A KANSAS IDYL, 70 
 
 CHAOS, 71 
 
 KEEFE v. GILLON, % 72 
 
 THE PYTHIAN, 73 
 
 THE KANSAS DUG-OUT 73 
 
 FEAR YE HIM, 75 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 ALGOMAR, . . . 76 
 
 GLORY, 77 
 
 JOHN BROWN 77 
 
 LIFE S MOONRISE, 80 
 
 LEGOUSIN Ai, 81 
 
 WHITHER, 81 
 
 MEDICINE, 82 
 
 THE SIEGE, 84 
 
 A HOLY WAR, 84 
 
 PARESIS, 85 
 
 THE OLD PIONEER, 86 
 
 THE VIOLET STAR, 87 
 
 THE ANCHORS, 88 
 
 SUPREME COURT CASE, 89 
 
 LEAP YEAR PARTY, 93 
 
 MONOLINE, 94 
 
 MILLIONS OP BAD, 95 
 
 TO-DAY, 96 
 
 EL MORAN, 96 
 
 TYPE, . 97 
 
 THE PRAIRIE STORM, 98 
 
 CHILDHOOD, 99 
 
 INGALLS vs. VOORHEES, 100 
 
 WINTER, *. 100 
 
 THE REASON lOt 
 
 WARFARE, 101 
 
 THE LOVIST, ...... 102 
 
 THE CRUSADES, 105 
 
 .Hie JONES, 106 
 
 THE ORGAN GRINDER, 114 
 
 THE SHORT HAIRED POET, 118 
 
 A ROMANCE, 132 
 
 A CORN POEM, 140 
 
 THE MEDICINE MAN, 150 
 
 ^Esop s FABLES: 
 
 ZEPHYR ET CANINE, 161 
 
 ANGUIS ET ANGUISH, 162 
 
 THE AXE-I-DENT, 163 
 
 PAVO, 164 
 
 AGRICOLA ET FILIUS, - 166 
 
 THE SWELL, 167 
 
 PERSIMMONS, 168 
 
 "DRAW," 168 
 
 THE INVIDIOUS CANINE, 169 
 
 LlMBURGER, 170 
 
 CAPERS ET CAPER, .171 
 
 THE AGENT AND THE AUGER, 172 
 
 THE UNSOCIABLE MILESTONES, 173 
 
 SUCKER AND SALAMANDER, 174 
 
 LIGHTNING BUG AND SKEETER, 175 
 
 NEUTRALIA, 177 
 
 ADIEU, 208 
 
RHYMES. 
 
THE WASHERWOMAN S SONG. 
 
 In a very humble cot, 
 
 In a rather quiet spot, 
 
 In the suds and in the soap, 
 Worked a woman full of hope; 
 
 Working, singing, all alone, 
 
 In a sort of undertone, 
 With a Savior for a friend, 
 He will keep me to the end." 
 
 Sometimes happening along, 
 I had heard the semi-song, 
 And I often used to smile, 
 More in sympathy than guile; 
 But I never said a word 
 In regard to what I heard, 
 As she sang about her friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 Not in sorrow nor in glee 
 Working all day long was she, 
 As her children, three or four, 
 Played around her on the floor; 
 
10 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 But in monotones the song 
 She was humming all day long, 
 With the Savior for a friend, 
 He will keep me to the end. " 
 
 It s a song I do not sing, 
 For I scarce believe a thing 
 Of the stories that are told 
 Of the miracles of old; 
 But I know that her belief 
 Is the anodyne of grief, 
 
 And will always be a friend 
 That will keep her to the end. 
 
 Just a trifle lonesome she, 
 Just as poor as poor could be, 
 But her spirits always rose, 
 Like the bubbles in the clothes, 
 And though widowed and alone, 
 Cheered her with the monotone, 
 Of a Savior and a friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 I have seen her rub and scrub, 
 On the washboard in the tub, 
 While the baby, sopped in suds, 
 Rolled and tumbled in the duds; 
 Or was paddling in the pools, 
 With old scissors stuck in spools; 
 She still humming of her friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
OH D. 
 
 Human hopes and human creeds 
 Have their root in human needs; 
 And I would not wish to strip 
 From that washerwoman s lip 
 Any song that she can sing, 
 Any hope that songs can bring; 
 For the woman has a friend 
 Who will keep her to the end. 
 
 OH D. 
 
 [A local editor having come to us, stating that times were good but "events" 
 scarce that accidents positively refused to happen, although surrounded by 
 the most fortuitous circumstances that people distinguished between their 
 own and their neighbors property with unusual accuracy, and that some 
 poetry must be had for the occasion, the following inspiration was furnished 
 him for a dollar.] 
 
 Oh, that some burglars 
 
 Into stores would break, 
 And heaps of "swag" 
 
 Feloniously take. 
 
 Oh, that two houses 
 
 Would take fire in town, 
 And one of them burn up, 
 
 And one burn down. 
 
 Oh, that some one would strike, 
 
 With angry frown, 
 A seven-foot man or coal bank 
 
 Near our town. 
 
12 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Oh, that some person 
 Who despaired of life 
 
 Would run away 
 
 With some one else s wife. 
 
 Oh, that they d catch 
 
 And bring some mighty thief 
 Here to our town, 
 
 Judge Margrave and to grief. 
 
 Oh, that some fiery 
 
 Horses would break loose, 
 
 And, like a gambler, 
 Play the very "deuce." 
 
 Oh, that some politicians 
 
 Would take pride 
 In killing rascals off 
 
 By suicide. 
 
 The gold of Ophir 
 
 We may Oh ! and owe for, 
 
 But now just now 
 
 It s "locals" we must go for. 
 
KRITERION. 13 
 
 KRITERIOK 
 
 I see the spire, 
 
 I see the throng, 
 I hear the choir, 
 
 I hear the song; 
 I listen to the anthem, while 
 It pours its volume down the aisle; 
 I listen to the splendid rhyme 
 That, with a melody sublime, 
 Tells of some far-off, fadeless clime - 
 Of man and his finality, 
 Of hope, and immortality. 
 
 Oh, theme of themes! 
 
 Are men mistaught? 
 Are hopes like dreams, 
 To come to naught? 
 Is all the beautiful and good 
 Delusive and misunderstood? 
 
 And has the soul no forward reach? 
 And do indeed the facts impeach 
 The theories the teachers teach? 
 And is this immortality 
 Delusion, or reality? 
 
14 RHYMES OF IRONQITILL. 
 
 What hope reveals 
 
 Mind tries to clasp, 
 But soon it reels 
 
 With broken grasp. 
 No chain yet forged on anvil s brink 
 Was stronger than its weakest link; 
 And do not arguments maintain 
 That many links along the chain 
 Cannot resist a reason strain? 
 And is not immortality 
 The child of ideality? 
 
 And yet at times 
 
 We get advice 
 That seems like chimes 
 
 From paradise; 
 
 The soul doth sometimes seem to be 
 In sunshine which it cannot see; 
 At times the spirit seems to roam 
 Beyond the land, above the foam, 
 Back to some half-forgotten home. 
 Perhaps this immortality 
 May be indeed reality. 
 
THE FISHER MAIDEN. 15 
 
 THE FISHER MAIDEN. 
 
 [From the German of Heine.] 
 
 Thou maiden with eyes so dreamy, 
 Thou child of the waves and spray, 
 
 Thy home is beside the ocean, 
 
 Where the surf and the breakers play; 
 
 Come sit thee down here beside me, 
 And list to the words I say. 
 
 My heart is a stormy ocean; 
 
 And out on its rocky slopes 
 The turbulent billows are flinging 
 
 The spars, and the keels, and the ropes 
 They are wrecks of my aspirations, 
 
 The wrecks of my ruined hopes. 
 
 My heart is an angry ocean; 
 
 The gales as they come and go, 
 Do strew it with wrecks and ruin; 
 
 But down in its light waves low 
 The shells and the pearls and corals 
 
 Do glitter and gleam and glow. 
 
 Wilt thou launch on this stormy ocean, 
 Thou child of the waves and spray? 
 
 Twill float thee securely forever, 
 Wherever thy bark may stray, 
 
 Till the crimson of life s last twilight 
 Shall fade in the west away. 
 
16 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 POLITICS. 
 
 Ever so many the childhood friends 
 
 That started ahead of me, 
 With fearless ignorance, fearless hope, 
 
 To sail on the vitriol sea; 
 Little they knew of the depth or the scope 
 
 Of the treacherous vitriol sea. 
 
 Some of them sailed in boats of wood 
 
 Think of it ! sailed with glee, 
 In boats of wood yes, paintod wood ! 
 
 Out on that vitriol sea; 
 It eat the boats up wood was not good 
 
 To sail in a vitriol sea. 
 
 Many tried brass, and some tried glass, 
 
 To sail on the vitriol sea; 
 Mindless alike of corrosion or storms, 
 
 They sailed with a fearless glee; 
 Happy to-day, but to-morrow, in swarms, 
 
 To be wrecked in the vitriol sea. 
 
 "Where were they going," I hear you ask, 
 "That sailed on the vitriol sea? " 
 
 Well, that is a something I do not know, 
 A mystery even to me; 
 
 But still they did go, and determined to go 
 And sail on the vitriol sea. 
 
THE HOMEOPATHIC DOCTOR. 
 
 SHADOW. 
 
 The day has been vague, and the sky has been bleak, 
 
 And things have gone backward the whole day long; 
 The friends as I met them did scarcely speak, 
 And vainly the things I have lost I seek ! 
 
 And I m weary and sad and the world is wrong. 
 
 The morrow has come, and the sky has grown clear, 
 The world appears righted, and rings with song; 
 The friends as I meet them are merry and cheer, 
 The things that I thought I had lost reappear, 
 And the work drives forward the whole day long. 
 
 As the strings of a harp, standing side by side, 
 
 Are the days of sadness and days of song; 
 The sunshine and shadow are ever allied, 
 But the shadows will fade, and the sunshine bide. 
 Though to-day may be dim and the world go wrong. 
 
 THE HOMCEOPATHIC DOCTOR. 
 
 If like cures like, 
 
 Explain to me, my brother, 
 How is it doctors 
 
 Cannot cure each other? 
 
18 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 THE SUNSET MARMATON. 
 
 O, Marmaton ! O, Marmaton ! from out the rich 
 autumnal west, there creeps a misty, pearly rest, as 
 through an atmosphere of dreams, along thy course, 
 O, Marmaton ! a rich September sunset streams. Thy 
 purple sheen, through prairies green, from out the 
 burning west is seen. 
 
 I watch thy fine approaching line, that seems to flow 
 like blood-red wine fresh from the vintage of the sun. 
 The spokes of steel and blue reveal the outlines of a 
 phantom wheel, while airy armies, one by one, march 
 out on dress parade. I see unrolled in blue and gold 
 the guidons where the line is made, and, where the lazy 
 zephyrs strolled along thy verdant esplanade, I see the 
 crested, neighing herd go plunging to the stream. I 
 hear the flying, shrieking scream of startled bird. The 
 Kansas day is done. 
 
 O, Marmaton! O, Marmaton! thou hast no story and 
 no song ; unto the vast and empty past in which thy 
 former life was cast, thou dost not yet belong. No 
 mountain cradle hast thou had; along thy line no sum 
 mits shine, no cliffs, no gorges, stern and sad, stand in 
 the waning twilight, clad in melancholy pine. Thou 
 art the even tempered child of prairies, on whose ver 
 dure wild eternities have smiled. 
 
 O, Marmaton! O, Marmaton! be patient, for thy day 
 will come, and bring the bugle and the drum. Thy 
 fame shall like thy ripples run ; thou shalt be storied 
 
THE SUNSET MARMATON. 19 
 
 yet. Within this great and central State, the destiny 
 of some great day upon thy banks is set. Artillery 
 will sweep away the orchard and the prairie home, and 
 while the wheat stacks redly burn, armies of infantry 
 will charge the lines of works along thy marge, while 
 cavalry brigades will churn thy frightened waters into 
 foam. The spell of centuries will break, and thou shalt 
 suddenly awake, and have a story that will make a na 
 tion s pulses thrill. And when again thy banks are 
 still, no new admirer of the time can say of thee in 
 feeble rhyme: "O, Marmaton! O, Marmaton! thou hast 
 no story and no song; thou hast no history of wrong; 
 unto the vast and empty past in which thy former life 
 was cast, thou dost not yet belong." 
 
 O, Marmaton! O, Marmaton! the centuries will pass 
 along, and slowly, singly, one by one, repeat thy story 
 and thy song. Thy time abide, O, Marmaton! while 
 side by side, O, Marmaton! the shadows o er thy prai 
 ries glide, thy prairies wide, O, Marmaton ! For nations 
 come and nations go, whither and whence we do not 
 know. Great days in stormy years though hid, great 
 years, dark centuries amid, will ever and anon emerge, 
 like life boats drifting through a surge where billows 
 sweep and mad winds urge. Of future heed, O, Mar 
 maton! thou hast no need, O, Marmaton! with quiet 
 force, in quiet course, still murmur on, O, Marmaton! 
 
20 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 A SEA-BIOUS STORY. 
 
 From Panama to San Francisco bay, 
 An overcrowded steamship sailed away. 
 
 The third day out, a husky miner came 
 Up to the clerk, and calling him by name, 
 
 He said: "Your ship is crowded, sir, a heap 
 Too much for me; find me a place to sleep." 
 
 The clerk responded, with a stately smile: 
 Sleep where you ve been a sleeping all the while. 
 
 "It kaynt be did," the miner answered quick. 
 "I slept upon a deck hand who was sick; 
 
 "He s convalessed, and now since he is stronger, 
 He swears he won t endure it any longer." 
 
 The clerk was pleased to hear the miner s mirth, 
 And fixed him with a "snifter" and a berth. 
 
TAEPEIA. 2 1 
 
 TAKPEIA. 
 
 Upon the massive walls 
 
 The cloudless moonlight falls; 
 It silver-plates the portico and fane; 
 
 The tawny Tiber drifts 
 
 By castellated cliffs, 
 And bears its sluggish wavelets to the main. 
 
 While from her azure height, 
 
 The Niobe of night 
 Looks wanly down, so sad yet so serene; 
 
 The Sabine army waits 
 
 Before the massive gates, 
 That guard the citadel, Capitoline. 
 
 Anon the silver fades 
 
 From walls and colonnades; 
 Clouds scarred with fire hurl down the vengeful rain; 
 
 Impelled by gusty waifs, 
 
 The tawny Tiber chafes, 
 And hurls its turbid foamage to the main. 
 
 No more the angles sharp, 
 
 Of bastion and of scarp, 
 Project their outlines on the moonlight sky; 
 
 But silent and unseen, 
 
 The high Capitoline 
 Fades in the shades that low and misty lie. 
 
22 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Amid the darkening damp, 
 
 The Sabines leave their camp, 
 Before the gate their solid columns go; 
 
 And there Tarpeia stands, 
 
 With her unaided hands 
 To open wide the portals to the foe. 
 
 Then spake the king to her: 
 
 < What gift shall I confer, 
 O, maid of Rome, so daring and so fair ? " 
 
 The Roman maiden spake: 
 
 "Those jewels I will take, 
 That on their arm your Sabine soldiers wear." 
 
 The eager columns march 
 
 Beneath the rugged arch; 
 They crush the maid with bracelets and with shields. 
 
 A pledge is kept, and broke; 
 
 And in the din and smoke, 
 The lurid fire the doom of war reveals. 
 
 Then comes the gloomy gray, 
 
 The harbinger of day 
 Hurled from the rock Tarpeia finds a grave; 
 
 And flaring like a flume, 
 
 The Tiber through the gloom 
 Transfers the tomb out to the cryptic wave. 
 
TARPEIA. 23 
 
 Hope s signal torch is seen 
 
 Upon life s Esqualine, 
 Its Quirinal, its rocky Palatine; 
 
 From battlemented walls, 
 
 Life s merry warder calls 
 The hourly watches from Capitoline. 
 
 O, Fate! behind a mask, 
 
 You promise all we ask 
 Wealth, honor, health, and happiness and fame; 
 
 And then you keep, yet break, 
 
 The promises you make 
 You take the substance and you leave the name. 
 
 Some ask of you a crown, 
 
 A scepter, or renown; 
 Some claim the jewels that your bright arm bears; 
 
 But then, alas, you fling, 
 
 With every given thing, 
 The weight of troubles and the crush of cares. 
 
 Perhaps twere best to wait 
 
 Behind the rugged gate, 
 To ask no favor from your ready hand; 
 
 To fight, and ask no charm 
 
 From off your jeweled arm, 
 And be not crushed with favors we demand. 
 
24 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 THE AZTEC CITY. 
 
 There is a clouded city, that doth rest 
 
 Beyond the crest 
 Where Cordilleras mar the mystic west. 
 
 There suns unheeded rise and re-arise; 
 
 And in the skies 
 The harvest moon unnoticed lives and dies. 
 
 And yet this clouded city hath no night 
 
 Volcanic light 
 Doth give eternal noon-tide, redly bright. 
 
 A thousand wells, whence cooling waters came, 
 
 No more the same, 
 Now send aloft a thousand trees of flame. 
 
 This clouded city is enchanting fair, 
 
 For rich and rare 
 From sculptured frieze the gilded griffins glare. 
 
 With level look with loving, hopeful face, 
 
 Fixed upon space, 
 Stand caryatides of unknown race. 
 
 And lofty colonnades are there, of green, 
 
 Hard serpentine, 
 Carved on whose shafts strange alphabets are seen. 
 
THE AZTEC CITY. 25 
 
 And from triumphant arches, looking down 
 
 Upon the town, 
 In porphyry, sad, unknown statesmen frown. 
 
 And there are lofty temples, rich and great, 
 
 And at the gate, 
 Carved in obsidian, the lions wait. 
 
 And there are palace homes, and stately walls, 
 
 And open halls 
 Where fountains are, with voiceless waterfalls. 
 
 The ruddy fires incessantly illume 
 
 Temple and tomb, 
 And in their blaze the stone-wrought blossoms blopm. 
 
 From clouds congealed the mercury distills, 
 
 And forming rills, 
 Adown the streets in double streamlet trills. 
 
 As rains from clouds, that summer skies eclipse, 
 
 From turret tips 
 And spire and porch the mobile metal drips. 
 
 No one that visited this fiery hive 
 
 Ever alive 
 Came out but me I, I alone, survive. 
 
26 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 THE KANSAS HERDER. 
 
 He rode by starlight o er the prairies dim, 
 While melancholy, with an aimless whim, 
 Through trackless grass was blindly leading him. 
 
 And then he said: "Beneath the heavens blue curve r 
 There has been fate misfortune would not serve, 
 There has been love misfortune could not swerve." 
 
 But as he spake these words, it seemed that they 
 Fell volatile, like autumn leaves, and lay 
 Till zephyrs came and swept them all away. 
 
 And then he said: "O, words of love, alas! 
 
 Lighter than feathers, frangible as glass, 
 
 Always the last to come, always the first to pass." 
 
 The prairies, ever echoless, did make 
 
 Him no response impassible, opaque, 
 
 The night air smothered what he wildly spake. 
 
 Tke prairie larks sang at the break of day; 
 He heard them not, but as he lifeless lay 
 He wore a smile, faint, thoughtful, far away. 
 
THE KANSAS OCTOBER. 27 
 
 THE KANSAS OCTOBER. 
 
 The cheeriness and charm 
 
 Of forest and of farm 
 Are merging into colors sad and sober; 
 
 The hectic frondage drapes 
 
 The nut trees and the grapes 
 September yields to opulent October. 
 
 The cottonwoods that fringe 
 
 The streamlets take the tinge; 
 Through opal haze the sumac bush is burning; 
 
 The lazy zephyrs lisp 
 
 Through corn fields dry and crisp, 
 Their fond regrets for days no more returning. 
 
 The farm dog leaves the house 
 
 To flush the pinnate grouse; 
 The languid steers on blue-stem lawns are feeding; 
 
 The evening twilight sees 
 
 The rising Pleiades, 
 While autumn suns are to the south receding. 
 
 To me there comes no thrill 
 
 Of gloominess or chill, 
 As leaflets fade from branches elm or oaken; 
 
 As lifelessly they hang, 
 
 To me there comes no pang; 
 To me no grief the falling leaves betoken. 
 
28 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 As summer s floral gems 
 
 Bequeath us withered stems, 
 And autumn-shattered relics dry and umber: 
 
 So do these lives of ours, 
 
 Like summer leaves and flowers, 
 Flourish apace, and in their ripeness slumber. 
 
 THE BLUE-BIRD OF NOVEMBER. 
 
 The wind is howling wildly, like a drove of lean ki-yutes: 
 The steel-clad, floating, freezing storm-cloud from the 
 
 northwest comes. 
 
 I m in my cheerful office, reading poems, and my boots 
 Are poked up on the stove, which with a blazing hod- 
 full hums. 
 
 I m reading of a blue-eyed, wandering, hopeful little 
 princess looking for a home. 
 
 I lay my book of poems upside down upon a chair 
 I step up to the window, where a box of fine-cut stands; 
 Says I, By jings, these princesses are getting mighty 
 
 rare; 
 And always have such dreadful times with lovers and 
 
 with plans, 
 I d like to see a useless, blue-eyed, wandering littU 
 
 princess looking for a home. 
 
THE BLUE-BIRD OF NOVEMBER. 29 
 
 : The world is full of sympathy, the world is full of 
 homes ; 
 
 The world is full of friendships, though hidden they 
 may be; 
 
 When gone are friends and sympathy, perforce the 
 creature roams, 
 
 Invoking them, imploring them, at large, o er land and 
 sea." 
 
 .( That s what this maniac poet writes, about this blue- 
 eyed little princess looking for a home. ) 
 
 See here, you straggling blue-bird, hopping on the win 
 dow sill ! 
 
 You hop and flop and flutter, like a worn-out Greeley 
 flag; 
 
 You d better hunt your roosting place; it s winter, and 
 it s chill, 
 
 And hoarse, bleak, evening ice-storms after one another 
 tag. 
 
 Says she, Unhappy me; I m nothing but a wandering, 
 useless little blue-bird, hunting for a home." 
 
 Says I, Then skip for Texas, it isn t far away; 
 
 Go down to. where warm gulf mists through the orange 
 
 branches swoop; 
 Light out to where the sunshine dances on G-alvestoii 
 
 " Bay, 
 The winter-blossomed Brazos, the vine-lined Guada- 
 
 loupe. 
 If I were an itinerant, useless, homeless blue-bird, with 
 
 your wings, I d find a home. 
 
30 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Says she, "Speak not of Guadaloupe, the Brazos, the 
 
 Bay 
 The winter-blooming prairies of that sunny-hearted 
 
 zone; 
 I have flown through orange branches, I have floated 
 
 on the spray; 
 
 I discover no companions, and I find myself alone. 
 I find myself a lonesome, sad, unsocial little blue-bird, 
 
 longing for a home. 
 
 Into the raging stove I then did boost a hod of coal, 
 And raising up the winter-crusted sash-bar from the 
 
 sill, 
 
 Says I, Your lonesome feelings I to some extent condole: 
 Tramp in; here s feed and firelight, be a tenant at your 
 
 will; 
 And listen while I read a lovely, long-haired poem of a 
 
 princess with no home. 
 
 "The world is full of happiness, the world is full of 
 
 homes, 
 
 The world is full of sympathy, though hidden it may be. 
 When gone are friends and sympathy, perforce the 
 
 creature roams, 
 Princess or blue-bird, seeking them, over the land or 
 
 sea." 
 That s what this gifted maniac says, about his little 
 
 blue-eyed princess looking for a home. 
 
THE GEESE AND THE CRANES. 31 
 
 THE GEESE AND THE CRAVES. 
 
 It is sunrise; in the morn 
 Stands a field of ripened corn; 
 And the rich autumnal rays 
 Of those sunny Kansas days 
 Fill that field of ripened corn 
 
 With an opalescent haze; 
 And the flocks of geese and cranes 
 Pick the fallen, golden grains. 
 
 It is noon- time; and the rays 
 Of the Indian summer blaze; 
 And the field of ripened corn, 
 Much more shattered than at morn, 
 Seems emerging from the haze; 
 Fewer geese, but far more cranes, 
 Pick the fallen, golden grains. 
 
 It is evening; and the haze 
 
 Of the short autumnal days, 
 Like a mantle, seems to rest 
 On the dark and leaden west; 
 
 Shattered is the field of maize; 
 
 Homeward fly the geese, the cranes 
 Linger, picking golden grains. 
 
32 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 It is midnight; rains and sleet 
 On the blackened landscape beat, 
 
 And there nothing now remains 
 Of that field of standing corn. 
 
 But through darkness, sleet and rains 
 
 Comes the crying of the cranes, 
 As they search through fields forlorn, 
 
 Fighting for the final grains. 
 
 Hours the grains, and life the field 
 Where the golden grains are had; 
 And our habits, good and bad, 
 Represent the geese and cranes 
 Eating up the golden grains. 
 Few the habits that are best, 
 And they early go to rest; 
 But through sleet and midnight rains 
 Heard the clamors are of cranes 
 Fighting for the final grains. 
 
FAILURE. 33 
 
 FAILURE. 
 
 An old man sat upon the porch at evening; 
 Down in the west the clouds were banked and sullen; 
 No one was near him, and with withered tone, 
 The old man spoke unto himself alone: 
 
 My life has been a vanity and failure; 
 My wife, my health, my fortune taken from me; 
 While strange disaster, striking far and wide, 
 Has scattered all my children from my side. 
 
 And here I am alone, without a dollar, 
 
 The hopes of youth all shattered and abandoned; 
 
 My life a failure failure from the first, 
 
 A vanity, a failure, of the worst." 
 
 Adown the west he looked with gloomy sorrow, 
 And as he spoke the sky grew more tenebral; 
 From time to time the cloud banks lit with flame, 
 And fitful zephyrs came, and died, and came. 
 
 Upon his staff his hands were clasped and trembling, 
 Upon his hands his brow in sorrow rested, 
 And the sad west did seem as if to take 
 A tinge more dark and dismally opaque. 
 
 Then all at once there seemed to stand beside him 
 A being draped as if with phosphorescence 
 A form of beauty, that might aptly seem 
 To be the emanation of a dream. 
 
34 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 So beautiful and good it seemed, no mortal 
 Need but behold her once to idolize her ; 
 While character and sympathy and grace 
 Shone like an inspiration in her face, 
 
 She placed her hand upon the old man s shoulder. 
 And spoke in words of magic tone and feeling : 
 "Why thus, my father, do you sadly brood 
 O er withered hopes with which all life is strewed? 
 
 "Your life, though toilsome, has not been a failure; 
 
 Old age may find you left without a dollar ; 
 
 But earth has blossomed where your hands have 
 
 wrought, 
 The world grown wiser where your lips have taught, 
 
 "Those coming first build up for those who follow, 
 Shaping the future though they know not of it; 
 As on the slow-wrought ledges coralline 
 The continents of future times are seen. 
 
 "Though in old age, without a friend or dollar, 
 He who has spent a life of honest labor 
 Can say with certainty, when life is done, 
 That his has been a most successful one. 
 
 1 There is no place, except on earth, for dollars 
 Your scattered children will be reunited; " 
 And then she stooped and kissed the old man s cheek, 
 And said, "My father," but he did not speak. 
 
QUESTION. 35 
 
 The vision vanished, but the old man moved not, 
 The grief was over, and the failure ended; 
 While on the lifeless face, serene and fixed, 
 There seemed a smile as if of peace unmixed. 
 
 Down in the west the banks of cloud tenebral 
 Did lift and scatter in the viewless ether, 
 And in their stead, with mild and steady light, 
 There shone again the jewels of the night. 
 
 QUESTION. 
 
 To his courtier spake the Czar, 
 Looking o er the fields afar: 
 "Count the plowmen that you see, 
 And their number tell to me." 
 
 From the palace porch afar 
 Looked and answered he the Czar: 
 "In the distance there are two 
 Two is all there are in view." 
 
 "Rightly spoken," said the Czar, 
 
 "Two the men that plowing are; 
 
 Tell their number, if you can, 
 
 If we call that plow a man." 
 
36 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Quickly answered he the Czar: 
 "Two the men now plowing are; 
 Call that plow a man, and then 
 THREE the number of the men." 
 
 Flashed with anger then the Czar, 
 And his eye gleamed like a star, 
 As he looked the courtier through: 
 "Wrong, sir, WRONG! still, only two. 
 
 Who shall stand beside a Czar, 
 With an empire spreading far ? 
 Who shall give advice to kings, 
 Knowing not that things are things ? 
 
 By the edict of the Czar, 
 G-et thee to Caucasus far; 
 Till thy life has taught thee when 
 Things are things, and men are men. 
 
 NEWSPAPER LOCAL. 
 
 OUND A lady s rubber shoe, near Main street bridge, which can be had 
 by calling on the undersigned. 
 
 We d like to know what fairy little foot 
 
 This straggling, wandering overshoe encased; 
 
 What teeny, tiny, tasty little "toot" 
 
 This red-lined, roaming "injun-rubber " graced. 
 
THE GRANGER S TEXT. 37 
 
 A bachelor whose heart was iron-cased, 
 
 Or any other idiotic feller, 
 Could mourn himself to death on this misplaced 
 
 And wandering souvenir of some Cinderella. 
 If she ain t single, then these words we waste; 
 For stern and glum 
 Some married man may come 
 And interview us with an umberrella. 
 
 THE GRANGER S TEXT. 
 
 Long the Topeka convention wrangled, 
 "Good men for office" got into a balk, 
 Grange nominations were hopelessly tangled, 
 Sargent got up and gave them a talk; 
 Said to the delegates quarreling so, 
 "Smooth it over and let it go." 
 
 Many a time I have thought of the quarrel 
 
 That "good men for office" so often reach; 
 Many a time I have thought that a moral 
 Shone like a lantern in Sargent s speech; 
 
 When he suggested to friend and foe 
 "Smooth it over and let it go." 
 
 When a fierce editor, boiling with fury. 
 
 Paints you with hot, editorial tar, 
 Don t start a libel suit, don t hire a jury, 
 
 Don t seek redress from the bench or the bar; 
 Lies sometimes vanish, facts always grow, 
 "Smooth it over and let it go." 
 
38 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 When you consent to be placed on a ticket, 
 When you have made up your mind to run, 
 
 Leg it your best the political thicket 
 
 Tears off your clothes, but makes lots of fan; 
 
 If you are minus a vote or so, 
 "Smooth it over and let it go." 
 
 Efforts and hopes may be lighter or graver, 
 
 Either in politics, business or fame; 
 Things may go crooked, and friendships may waver, 
 Nevertheless the rule is the same; 
 
 Facts will be facts; when you find it so, 
 "Smooth it over and let it go." 
 
 THE SERENADE. 
 
 In the pale light 
 
 The angel of the night, 
 
 With silver sickle, reaped the western stars; 
 Across my sleep, 
 Dreamless as well as deep, 
 
 There came a ballad, whose remembered bars, 
 Brought back to me a day 
 A year long passed away. 
 
DECORA TION DAT. 39 
 
 An old, old song, 
 
 Although forgotten long, 
 Brings childhood back as songs alone can bring; 
 
 We see bright eyes, 
 
 Behold unclouded skies, 
 We re-inhale the fragrance of life s spring; 
 
 While, as of unseen bird, 
 
 Rustle of wing is heard. 
 
 Shall our last sleep 
 
 Eternal stillness keep ? 
 Shall pulseless dust enclose a dreamless soul ? 
 
 Or shall we hear 
 
 Those songs so old and dear, 
 As mid tempestuous melodies there roll 
 
 Upon our waking ears 
 
 The choruses of spheres ? 
 
 DECORATION DAY. 
 
 [Reel ted at Arlington.] 
 
 It is needless I should tell you 
 
 Of the history of Sumter, 
 How the chorus of the cannon shook its walls; 
 
 How the scattered navies gathered, 
 
 How the iron-ranked battalions 
 Rose responsive to the country s urgent calls. 
 
40 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 It is needless that I tell you, 
 
 For the time is still too recent, 
 How was heard the first vindictive cannon s peal; 
 
 How that brothers stopped debating 
 
 On the then unsettled question, 
 And referred it to the arbitrating steel. 
 
 It is needless that I tell you 
 
 Of the somber days that followed 
 Stormy days that in such slow succession ran; 
 
 Of Antietam, Chickamauga, 
 
 G-ettysburg, and Murfreesboro , 
 Or the rocky, cannon-shaken Rapidaji. 
 
 It was not a war of conquest, 
 
 It was fought to save the Union, 
 It was waged for an idea of the right; 
 
 And the graves so widely scattered 
 
 Show how fruitful an idea 
 In peace, or war, may be in moral might. 
 
 Brief indeed the war had lasted 
 Were it waged in hope of plunder; 
 
 Briefer still had simple glory been its aim. 
 But its long and sad duration 
 And the graves it has bequeathed us 
 
 Thoughts of glory, gold, or conquest disproclaim. 
 
DECORA TION DA Y. 41 
 
 Need I mention this idea, 
 
 The invincible idea, 
 That so seemed to hold and save the nation s life; 
 
 That, resistless and unblenching, 
 
 Undisheartened by disaster, 
 Seemed the soul and inspiration of the strife. 
 
 This idea was of freedom 
 
 Was that men should all stand equal, 
 That the world was interested in the fight; 
 
 That the present and the future 
 
 Were electors who had chosen 
 Us to argue and decide the case aright. 
 
 And the theories of freedom 
 
 These now silent bugles uttered 
 Will reverberate with ever growing tones; 
 
 They can never be forgotten, 
 
 But will work among the nations 
 Till they sweep the world of shackles and of thrones. 
 
 It is meet that we do honor 
 
 To the comrades who have fallen 
 Meet that we the sadly woven garlands twine. 
 
 Where they buried lie is sacred, 
 
 Whether neath the northern marble 
 Or beneath the southern cypress-tree or pine. 
 
 4 
 
42 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Nations are the same as children, 
 
 Always living in the future, 
 Living in their aspirations and their hopes; 
 
 Picturing some future greatness, 
 
 Reaching forth for future prizes, 
 With a wish for higher aims and grander scopes. 
 
 It is proper it should be so, 
 
 It is better for the people 
 That they give their future nations better lives; 
 
 That they reach for an ideal, 
 
 Though both difficult and distant, 
 Though it be in dreams alone that it arrives. 
 
 If a people rest contented 
 
 With the good they have accomplished, 
 Then that nation slowly retrogrades away. 
 
 Give a nation an ideal, 
 
 Some grand, noble, central project, 
 It, like adamant, refuses to decay. 
 
 It s the duty of the poet, 
 
 It s the duty of the statesman, 
 To inspire a nation s life with nobler aims; 
 
 And dishonor will o ershadow 
 
 Him who dares not, or who falsely 
 His immortal-fruited mission misproclaims. 
 
THE PHOTO-GRAPH-U-IST. 4.3 
 
 THE PHOTO-GRAPH-U-IST. 
 
 A ROMANCE FOUNDED ON FICTION. 
 
 Yes, very many pictures this photographist took, 
 He glued em to a pasteboard, and stuck em in a book, 
 So when you wished to see em, all you had to do was 
 look. 
 
 To have their pictures taken, with joyousness and glee 
 A flock of little maidens came, and one of them, O, she 
 Was just as sweet and beautiful as beautiful could be. 
 
 Alas, our photograph-u-ist was captured from the sart. 
 
 For when she " struck her attitude " with such an art 
 less art, 
 
 She glued her blue-eyed picture to his pasteboard and 
 his heart. 
 
 She left the latter picture for her worshiper to keep. 
 Too well had it been taken, so accurate, so deep 
 It robbed him of his happiness, and even of his sleep. 
 
 And still that blue-eyed photograph did haunt him day 
 and night; 
 
 Although he closed his peepers, twould float upon his 
 sight; 
 
 At last he says: "A note to her I will write out out 
 right." 
 
44: RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 1 O, blue-eyed little maiden, I never would invade 
 The old time-honored usages that courtesy hath made, 
 Unless I had an object which I couldn t have delayed. 
 
 Allow me, little maiden, to diffidently say, 
 
 How ceaselessly a photograph doth haunt me night 
 
 and day, 
 And vainly mental effort tries to banish it away. 
 
 This picture in my memory unceasingly doth dwell, 
 It follows like a shadow, and it haunts me like a spell; 
 It s YOURS, O blue-eyed maiden, whom I love so wild 
 and well. 
 
 "This picture from my memory can never be effaced: 
 You ve left a mental negative, and cruelly have 
 
 laced 
 My only heart with yours, within that crimson peasant 
 
 waist. 
 
 It grieves me such a story so abruptly to relate, 
 I only ask a syllable your answer is my fate, 
 And happiness or sorrow I impatiently await." 
 
 There is a stately mansion built with elegance and grace, 
 
 Its accurate location it matters not the case, 
 
 It may be Kansas City, or some other noisy place. 
 
 There is a spacious parlor I will not tell you where, 
 It s lighted up with chandeliers into a perfect glare, 
 Two persons stand before a crowd that has assembled 
 there, 
 
ELAINE OF MAINE. 45 
 
 And one has eyes of violet, bright as an amethyst, 
 And floats her chestnut ringlets on her shoulders like 
 
 a mist; 
 The other, he s our hero, yes, our Photograph-u-ist. 
 
 A minister is reading something very neat and terse. 
 It sounds just like a poem, but it doesn t come in verse. 
 It ends (if I remember) with, "for better or for 
 worse." 
 
 Right well, my photograph-u-ist, right well the choice 
 
 you made, 
 The "negative" is now "preserved" you need not be 
 
 afraid, 
 You ve gone and got the substance and the shadow will 
 
 not fade. 
 
 ELAINE OF MAINE. 
 
 (1884.) 
 
 Lashed to his flagship s mast, 
 Old Farragut, through iron-guarded bays, 
 Through fleets of fire, through batteries ablaze, 
 
 By shot and shell harassed, 
 While wreck and ruin seemed to block his way, 
 And splintered spars spread sprinkling on the spray. 
 Guiding his fleet throughout the frightful fray, 
 
 Into the harbor passed ; 
 And iron forts grew still 
 Beneath the victor s will, 
 
 Conquered at last. 
 
46 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 O, Elaine! amid the glare 
 Of party ruin, take the ship of state ; 
 We bind thee to its mast, thou statesman great; 
 
 And thine must be the care 
 
 To guide it on through rocks and reefs that vex 
 The changing channel with a thousand wrecks. 
 And though the surge shall sweep its sacred decks, 
 
 We know thou wilt not spare 
 Thy grandest efforts to conduct it by 
 The rocks and reefs, and shoals that seem to lie 
 
 Around it everywhere. 
 
 THE MINNESONG. 
 
 A. D. 1191. 
 
 Once a falcon I possessed; 
 
 And full many a knight and vassal 
 
 Watched him from my father s castle, 
 As, in gaudy ribbon dressed, 
 
 He would seek with fiery eye 
 
 Battle in the roomy sky, 
 And return to be caressed. 
 
 Once a lover I possessed, 
 
 On the field of battle knighted, 
 And at tournaments, delighted, 
 
 Did I watch his fiery crest; 
 
 Woven from the silken strands 
 By my own unaided hands, 
 
 Was the baldric on his breast. 
 
THE DEFAULTER. 47 
 
 But one day my bird did soar, 
 
 When the sky was black and stormy; 
 
 And my knight, whose fondness for me 
 Seemed as changeless as before, 
 
 Rode away in the crusade; 
 
 And as years successive fade, 
 Thev return to me no more. 
 
 Ah! In every land and tongue 
 Loved by emperor and vassal, 
 Serf in hovel, knight in castle 
 
 Ever old yet ever young, 
 
 Sung until the hours grew late, 
 Was the song of love and fate 
 
 Which the minnesinger sung. 
 
 THE DEFAULTER. 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
 I ll cross the sea, he said, and the future will be sunny, 
 
 The waves no more will rave; 
 I ll cross the sea, he said, and with other people s money 
 
 Be free and gay, beyond the ocean s wave. 
 
 PARIS. 
 
 I ll move again, he said, to Naples, Rome or Venice, 
 
 I will no more divide 
 With arrogant detectives I ll live in no more menace, 
 
 The Apennines shall separate us wide. 
 
48 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 ROME. 
 
 I ll cross the sea, he said, in a tone of melancholy, 
 
 I can divide no more; 
 I ve failed in being happy have failed in being jolly, 
 
 And justice waits me on a distant shore. 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
 I m here, he said, for justice, let the sentence be im 
 partial, 
 
 By it I will abide; 
 For my wife is broken-hearted, and I can no longer 
 
 marshal 
 
 Any of my scattered children to my side. 
 \ 
 
 JOLIET. 
 
 No one, he said, in chasing after happiness has found her; 
 
 But if she comes at all, 
 
 Comes uninvoked, unbidden, with a sunny halo round 
 her- 
 
 Visits alike the hovel and the hall. 
 
NEOPHYTE. 49 
 
 PASS. 
 
 A father said unto his hopeful son, 
 Who was Leonidas my cherished one?" 
 
 The boy replied, with words of ardent nature, 
 He was a member of the legislature." 
 How?" asked the parent; then the youngster saith: 
 14 He got a pass, and held her like grim death." 
 L> Whose pass? what pass?" the anxious father cried; 
 " Twas the*r monopoly," the boy replied. 
 
 In deference to the public, we must state, 
 That boy has been an orphan since that date. 
 
 NEOPHYTE. 
 
 Last night a zealous Irishman in town, 
 
 Meeting a Jew, squared off and knocked him down. 
 
 And when the Jew inquired of such behaviour, 
 Michael replied: "Bedad, ye kilt me Savior." 
 
 The Jew replied: "My friend, that is not so; 
 It happened eighteen centuries ago." 
 
.50 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Mike simply said: "Bedad, you may be right, 
 But then I only heard of it last night!" 
 
 And striking out reckless again, and loose, 
 Became a martyr in the calaboose. 
 
 Theology and ignorance combined 
 Make bigotry, and that makes all men blind; 
 And streams of ruin from this common source 
 Have swept the world with devastating force. 
 
 THE PROTEST. 
 
 [Written while the Government was removing from battle fields of seces 
 sion buried soldiers, and organizing national cemettries.] 
 
 Let them rest, let them rest, where they fell ; 
 On the prairie, in the forest, 
 Neath the cypress, or the laurel, 
 On the mountain, by the bayou, 
 
 In the dell; 
 
 Where they fought the soil is sacred, 
 Let the country all be sacred 
 To the ones who fought so bravely, 
 
 Long and well. 
 
 Do not rank them up in fields, 
 Under pallid marble shields; 
 
 Let them rest, let them rest, 
 Where they fell. 
 
THE BIRD SONG. 51 
 
 Let them rest, let them rest, where they fell; 
 All those places will be sacred 
 If you let them stay to guard them; 
 They will shroud those spots with valor 
 
 Like a spell. 
 
 And the soil will seem as planted 
 With the germs of vital freedom: 
 Where they spent their lives so grandly 
 
 Let them dwell. 
 Do not rank them up in fields, 
 Under pallid marble shields; 
 
 Let them rest and be worshiped 
 Where they fell. 
 
 THE BIRD SONG. 
 
 In the night air I heard the woodland ringing, 
 I heard it ring with wild and thrilling song; 
 
 Hidden the bird whose strange, inspiring singing 
 Seems yet to float in liquid waves along. 
 
 Seems yet to float with many a quirk and quaver, 
 With quirks and quavers and exultant notes, 
 
 As through the air, with sympathetic waver, 
 
 Down through the songs the falling star-light floats. 
 
 Speaking. I said: O bird with songs sonorous, 
 O bird with songs of such sonorous glee, 
 
 Sing me a song of joy, and in the chorus, 
 In the same chorus I will join with thee 
 
52 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 The songs that others sing seem but to sadden, 
 They seem to sadden, those that I have heard; 
 
 Sing me a song whose gleesome notes will gladden 
 Sing me a song of joy. Then sang the bird: 
 
 "There is a land where blossoming exotic, 
 The amaranths with fadeless colors glow; 
 
 "Where notes of birds with melodies chaotic 
 In tangled songs forever come and go. 
 
 "There skies serene and bland will bend above us, 
 And from them blessings like the rain will fall; 
 
 There those fond friends that we have loved shall love us, 
 In that bright land those friends shall love us all. " 
 
 The singer ceased, the melody sonorous 
 
 No more through starlit woodland floats along; 
 
 And as it ceased, my heart refused the chorus, 
 Refused to join the chorus of the song. 
 
 Talk not, I said, thou bird in branches hidden, 
 
 Hope s garlands bright grief s fingers slowly weave; 
 
 Grief slowly weaves from blooms that spring unbidden 
 That spring perennial when the heart doth grieve. 
 
 Grief present now proves naught of the eternal; 
 
 Grief proves no future with good blessings rife 
 With blessings rife and futures blandly vernal; 
 
 Facts show no logic in a future life. 
 
THE BIRD SONG. 53 
 
 And then I said: False is thy song sonorous 
 Thy song that floats from starlit woodland dim; 
 
 When we are gone, and flowers are blooming o er us 
 When man hath gone, there endeth all with him. 
 
 Re-sang the bird: "There skies shall bend above us, 
 And sprinkle blessings like the rains that fall; 
 
 And those we loved who loved us not shall love us, 
 In that bright land shall love us best of all." 
 
 Then came a song-burst of bewildering splendor, 
 That rolled in waves through forest corridors; 
 
 Up soared the bird, fain did my hopes attend her, 
 And hopes and songs were lost amid the stars. 
 
 Now all day long, upon my mind intruding, 
 There comes the echo of that last night s song; 
 
 Grief claims the wreck on which my mind is brooding, 
 Hope claims the facts which logic claimed so long. 
 
 Who cares, O bird, for skies that bend above us? 
 
 Who cares if blessings like the rain shall fall? 
 If only those who loved us not shall love us 
 
 In that bright future love us best of all. 
 
 Let logic marshal ranks of facts well stated, 
 It leads them on in brave though vain attacks; 
 
 For, looking down from bastions crenelated, 
 Hope smiles derision at assaulting facts. 
 
54 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 THE CHILD OF FATE. 
 
 I am the child of fate, 
 What need it matter me 
 Where I shall buried be! 
 
 Death cometh soon or late, 
 Whether on land or sea, 
 What may it matter me! 
 
 That which hope hangs upon 
 We can no insight get; 
 
 Blindly fate leads us on, 
 Storming life s parapet; 
 
 That which our course impels, 
 
 Naught of the future tells. 
 
 Whether upon the land, 
 Whether upon the strand, 
 What may it matter me 
 Where I shall buried be! 
 Death cometh soon or late, 
 All are the sport of fate. 
 
 What should it matter me, 
 
 Falling as others fell, 
 
 Shattered by shot or shell; 
 Either on land or sea, 
 
 Wrecked on the foaming bar,. 
 
 Crushed in the shattered car. 
 
10 LINE. 55 
 
 Whether by Arctic cliffs 
 Where the ice current drifts, 
 
 Where the bleak night wind sobs, 
 
 Where the black ice-tide throbs; 
 What though my bark may be 
 
 Sunk in some sullen sea! 
 
 Each has his work and way, 
 Each has his part and play, 
 
 Each has his task to do, 
 
 Both of the good and true. 
 Though thou art grave or gay, 
 
 Be thou yet brave and true. 
 
 Work for the right and just, 
 With an intrepid trust; 
 
 Then it need matter thee 
 
 Not that thou buried be, 
 Either on land or strand, 
 
 Either neath soil or sea. 
 
 IOLINE. 
 
 [ The poet s muse.] 
 
 One black evening in October 
 
 All the world seemed sad and sober, 
 
 And a doom 
 
 Dark and dismal, 
 Shrouded all life s colors prismal 
 And before me yawned abysmal 
 
 Gulfs of gloom. 
 
56 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Said I bitterly: I only 
 
 Of the world am sad and lonely, 
 
 I alone 
 
 Drain the chalice; 
 All the angels bear me malice, 
 There is love in cot and palace 
 
 None my own. 
 
 That dark night I turned a traitor 
 To myself and my Creator, 
 
 And I said: 
 
 Be it ended, 
 
 Hope may make existence splendid, 
 But without it, unattended 
 
 Better dead. 
 
 Then a something seemed to chide me 
 From the darkness there beside me, 
 In a tone 
 
 Uttered clearly: 
 "You have spoken insincerely; 
 There are those who you love dearly, 
 Though unknown." 
 
 Who are you, and whence your visit ? 
 Turning gruffly, said I: Is it 
 
 The unseen 
 
 To awaken ? 
 
 Said the voice: " You re mistaken; 
 It is loline forsaken 
 
 loline. " 
 
10 LINE. 57 
 
 When I heard the sentence uttered, 
 In bewilderment I stuttered 
 
 A remark 
 
 Somewhat grimly, 
 As a form, freshly, primly, . 
 Grew and ripened in the dimly 
 
 Lighted dark. 
 
 Yes, the artless little comer, 
 Like a musk rose in the summer 
 
 Seemed to bloom; 
 
 And her forehead 
 
 Shook back tresses that seemed borrowed 
 From the winter night, or quarried 
 
 Out of gloom. 
 
 With a smile arch and airy, 
 To my side came the fairy, 
 Like a queen 
 
 Blithe and bloomy. 
 Let us stroll," said she to me; 
 Yes, said I, for I m gloomy, 
 loline. 
 
 Ah! she told me gorgeous stories 
 Of her home, and the glories 
 
 Of the zone 
 
 Where it stretches. 
 And she hummed me little sketches 
 Of immortal music, such as 
 
 Sweeps the Throne. 
 
58 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 All my gloominess was banished; 
 Then the moon rose, and she vanished 
 
 Yes, my queen 
 
 Had departed, 
 
 But she kissed me ere she started; 
 And she left me sunny hearted 
 
 And serene. 
 
 To that land of sun and blossom 
 She has built a bridge of gossamer 
 
 And gold: 
 
 And I ve traveled 
 It in dreaming, and unraveled 
 Dismal doubts, whereon I caviled 
 
 Days of old. 
 
 Now no evening of October 
 Finds me ever sad or sober; 
 
 All the world 
 
 Seems a palace; 
 
 There are none who bear me malice, 
 And afar away the chalice 
 
 I have hurled. 
 
THE SPRING CHICKEN. 59 
 
 THE SPRING CHICKEN". 
 
 Came the prohibition yawper, 
 
 Mental tramp and moral pauper, 
 
 And he worried the incorpor 
 ated portions of the State. 
 
 As these frauds began to thicken. 
 
 Loud the yellow-legged chicken 
 
 Wailed, in accents terror stricken. 
 At the waywardness of fate, 
 
 With about as much religion 
 
 As a blue jay or a pigeon, 
 
 And a little just a smidgeon 
 
 More expert than Ananias; 
 Through the week day they did mock us. 
 With the skill they packed the caucus; 
 They could flank, out-lie, out-talk us, 
 
 And, on Sunday Oh ! so pious 
 
 Well! no longer from our rostrums 
 
 Do they peddle social nostrums; 
 
 Now no longer is the pulpit but the bull pit 
 
 Of a party; 
 
 Now no longer terror stricken 
 Does the vernal poultry sicken, 
 And the yellow-legged chicken 
 
 Now is growing fat and hearty. 
 
00 RHYMES OF IRONQU1LL. 
 
 FRAUDS. 
 
 Ambitious, shrewd, 
 Wealthy, vainglorious, fond of show, 
 Hanno of Carthage, centuries ago, 
 
 Determined to be great; he bought a brood 
 Of fledgling parrots, taught them at his nod 
 To scream in chorus: "Hanno is a god!" 
 
 When they were taught, 
 He had a hireling place them on the street, 
 As if for sale to those he chanced to meet; 
 
 But still by no one could the birds be bought. 
 Then Hanno passed in pomp, and gave a nod, 
 Out shrieked the parrots: "Hanno is a god!" 
 
 Cunningly done, 
 
 That night said Hanno, as he doffed his clothes 
 Of silk embroidery, to seek repose 
 
 Eternal immortality is won; 
 For heardst thou not that superstitious squad 
 Catch up the sentence, "Hanno is a god"? 
 
 A galley slave, 
 
 Condemned, went Hanno o er the cloudy seas 
 That hid the fabled Cassiterides; 
 
 Wealthy in grief, no home except the wave, 
 Lashed to the oar, betimes urged by the rod, 
 Not very much a man, much less a god. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE. 61 
 
 It could not win, 
 
 For then, as now, although the world applauds, 
 It turns at last and crucifies its frauds: 
 
 True to itself, though late it may begin, 
 True to itself, when once it has begun, 
 Square to the cross it spikes them one by one. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 
 
 [ The following was written on the day after the November State election, 
 1882, at which time the first Democratic Governor the State of Kansas ever had 
 was elected. The history of that time will warrant and explain the verses.] 
 
 Through the days so mild and mellow, 
 While the leaves were growing yellow, 
 We did bellow loudly bellow 
 
 For a platform full of "isms;" 
 Many others did like we did, 
 But our effort was unheeded, 
 For the people said they needed 
 
 More of sense, and less of schisms. 
 
 Long we shouted, and we spouted 
 Then we spouted and we shouted, 
 But the people jeered and flouted 
 
 At the manufactured shams. 
 Very faintly they hurrahed us. 
 Little cared they to applaud us, 
 And at last they turned and chawed, us, 
 
 While our singers sang their Psalms. 
 
02 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Female suffrage ! Prohibition ! 
 We are now in a position 
 To demand a new edition 
 
 A revision, as of yore; 
 And the late lamented martyr, 
 He has got a little starter 
 To the shades where many a smarter 
 
 Smarter man has gone before. 
 
 Well ! we re busted all to thunder; 
 They re on top and we are under; 
 They have carried off the plunder 
 
 Left us sittting on the fence. 
 Yes, my noble lord, they ve done it, 
 They have gone to work and won it. 
 Run it ? You just bet they ll run it. 
 
 Till our party gets some sense. 
 
 Let us relegate our preachers 
 To their desks as moral teachers; 
 Governments were made for creatures 
 
 That are living now on earth; 
 Not for angels that wear laurels, 
 But for men with woes and quarrels 
 Men of vice as well as morals, 
 
 Men of grief as well as mirth. 
 
 If a man is on an isthmus, 
 Or is troubled with strabismus, 
 You can talk from June till Christmas - 
 He is still as narrow-sighted; 
 
RETROSPECTIVE. (13 
 
 Add to this a poor digestion, 
 
 And the world must be refreshed on 
 
 Some important moral question, 
 
 And instanter must be righted. 
 
 Yes! that platform was a jewel; 
 It were cruel, very cruel, 
 Now to use it up for fuel, 
 
 But it must and will be done; 
 And our short-haired female brother, 
 And our long-haired other, t other 
 Brother he must find another, 
 
 Go and get another one. 
 
 And we ll make another platform, 
 
 ( What the darkey called a i flat-form, ) 
 
 Of a more improved and pat form 
 
 Than the thing we had of late; 
 And we ll have no "isms to damn it, 
 And we ll have no man to cram it 
 Down the people s throats, or ram it 
 
 Through the State. 
 
 When the party gets less antic 
 Over "isms," and less frantic 
 Over frauds that sycophantic 
 
 Fools rehearse, 
 Then the party will be victor, 
 And will march why, bless your pictur! 
 Prouder than a Roman lictor; 
 
 Now its lict or worse. 
 
RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 WHIST. 
 
 Hour after hour the cards were fairly shuffled, 
 And fairly dealt, but still I got no hand; 
 
 The morning came; but I, with mind unruffled. 
 Did simply say, "I do not understand." 
 
 Life is a same of whist. From unseen sources 
 
 o 
 
 The cards are shuffled, and the hands are dealt. 
 Blind are our efforts to control the forces 
 
 That, though unseen, are no less strongly felt. 
 
 I do not like the way the cards are shuffled. 
 
 But still I like the game and want to play; 
 And through the long, long night will I, unruffled. 
 
 Play what I get, until the break of day. 
 
 QUIVERA KANSAS. 
 
 15421882. 
 
 In that half-forgotten era, 
 With the avarice of old, 
 Seeking cities that were told 
 To be paved with solid gold, 
 
 In the kingdom of Quivera 
 
 Came the restless Coronado 
 
 To the open Kansas plain. 
 
 With his knights from sunny Spain; 
 
 In an effort that, though vain, 
 Thrilled with boldness and bravado. 
 
Q Uiy ERA KANSAS. (> 5 
 
 League by league, in aimless marching, 
 Knowing scarcely where or why, 
 Crossed they uplands drear and dry, 
 That an unprotected sky 
 
 Had for centuries been parching. 
 
 But their expectations, eager, 
 Found, instead of fruitful lands, 
 Shallow streams and shifting sands, 
 Where the buffalo in bands 
 
 Roamed o er deserts dry and meager. 
 
 Back to scenes more trite, yet tragic, 
 
 Marched the knights with armor d steeds; 
 Not for them the quiet deeds; 
 Not for them to sow the seeds 
 
 From which empires grow like magic. 
 
 Never land so hunger stricken 
 
 Could a Latin race remold; 
 
 They could conquer heat or cold 
 
 Die for glory or for gold 
 But net make a desert quicken. 
 
 Thus Quivera was forsaken; 
 
 And the world forgot the place, 
 
 Until centuries apace 
 
 Came the blue-eyed Saxon race, 
 And it bade the desert waken. 
 
06 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 And it bade the climate vary; 
 And awaiting no reply 
 From the elements on high, 
 It with plows besieged the sky 
 
 Vexed the heavens with the prairie. 
 
 Then the vitreous sky relented, 
 And the unacquainted rain 
 Fell upon the thirsty plain, 
 Whence had gone the knights of Spain. 
 
 Disappointed, discontented. 
 
 Sturdy are the Saxon faces, 
 As they move along in line; 
 Bright the rolling-cutters shine, 
 Charging up the State s incline, 
 
 As an army storms a glacis. 
 
 Into loam the sand is melted, 
 
 And the blue-grass takes the loam. 
 Round about the prairie home; 
 And the locomotives roam 
 
 Over landscapes iron-belted. 
 
 Cities grow where stunted birches 
 Hugged the shallow water line, 
 And the deepening rivers twine 
 Past the factory and mine, 
 
 Orchard slopes and schools and churches. 
 
PRINTER S INK. 07 
 
 Deeper grows the soil and truer, 
 
 More and more the prairie teems 
 
 With a fruitage as of dreams; 
 
 Clearer; deeper, flow the streams, 
 Blander grows the sky, and bluer. 
 
 We have made the State of Kansas, 
 
 .And to-day she stands complete 
 
 First in freedom, first in wheat; 
 
 And her future years will meet 
 Ripened hopes and richer stanzas. 
 
 As Samuel hewed A-gag to pieces in the presence of the king, 
 so we would like to hew one to pieces in the presence of the 
 "Wild, wild West." 
 
 PRINTER S INK. 
 
 Once spoke a teacher to his pupils, "Name 
 The metal that most honors men with fame." 
 
 Then shout the pupils, in a chorus, "Steel; 
 Before the sabre must the scepter reel." 
 
 "Wrong," spoke the teacher; "try again, and name 
 The metal that most honors men with fame." 
 
 Then shout the pupils, in a chorus, "G-old; 
 For it can buy, and honors all are sold." 
 
68 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 "Wrong," spoke the teacher; "try once more to name 
 The metal that most honors men with fame. " 
 
 They all were silent; then spoke one, "I think 
 That mighty metal must be printer zinc." 
 
 "Right," spoke the teacher; "for it doth not fail 
 To make the nations tremble and turn pale." 
 
 Then shout the students, in a chorus, "Right 
 
 The world most honors that which hath most might." 
 
 THE REAL. 
 
 They say 
 A flower that blooms, I know not whither, 
 
 Perhaps in sunny skies, 
 
 Is called the amaranth. It will not wither, 
 It never dies. 
 
 I never saw one. 
 
 They say 
 A bird of foreign lands, the condor, 
 
 Never alights, 
 
 But through the air unceasingly doth wander 
 In long, aerial flights. 
 T never saw one. 
 
THE REAL, 69 
 
 They say 
 That in Egyptian deserts, massive, 
 
 Half buried in the sands, 
 
 Swept by the hot sirocco, grandly impassive, 
 The statue of colossal Memnon stands. 
 I never saw it. 
 
 They say 
 A land faultless, far off and fairy 
 
 A summer land, with woods and glens and glades, 
 Is seen where palms rise feathery and airy, 
 
 And from whose lawns the sunlight never fades. 
 I never saw it. 
 
 They say 
 The stars make melody sonorous, 
 
 While whirling on their poles. 
 They say through space this planetary chorus 
 Magnificently rolls. 
 
 I never heard it. 
 
 Now what 
 Care I for amaranth or condor, 
 
 Colossal Memnon, or the fairy land, 
 Or for the songs of planets as they wander 
 Through arcs superlatively grand. 
 They are not real. 
 
 Hope s idle 
 Dreams the real vainly follows, 
 
 Facts stay as fadeless as the Parthenon, 
 While fancies, like the summer-tinted swallows, 
 
 Flit gaily mid its arches and are gone. 
 
70 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 A KASAS IDYL. 
 
 Into a frontier town of Kansas came 
 
 An aborigine, with moccasins and war paint; 
 
 And he bore the look wan look of the 
 
 Untutored savage. There did also come 
 
 A proud Caucasian, in boots and spurs and pistols 
 
 Clad a rover, full of strange oaths, and 
 
 Bearded, like his pard. He had a classic 
 
 Brow. In youth at Yale a stroke-oar he 
 
 Had been, and deemed a youth of power and culture 
 
 Rare. They each to each a stranger 
 
 Sought this Kansas village in pursuit 
 
 Of ardent spirits. Prohibition held full sway, 
 
 And the unrelenting man of drugs and 
 
 Merchandise refused to sell the article 
 
 Demanded. Away in anger and disgust 
 
 The proud Caucasian strode, and as 
 
 His fervid language percolated through 
 
 The filmy ether, spectators at a distance 
 
 Thought that an aurora borealis was 
 
 On exhibition. Back to his ranch returning, 
 
 He to bed went sober. But the aborigine 
 
 With more stoicism met refusal from 
 
 The man of drugs, and purchasing of hair oil 
 
 A quart bottle, to his wigwam went. 
 
 Into that oil that aborigine some water poured, 
 
 And by a process of disintegration the 
 
 Alcohol, with which the oil was cut, 
 
CHAO& 71 
 
 United with the water, and the oil, 
 Floating above, was gently skimmed away. 
 And then the noble aborigine proceeded 
 To become inebriated, and well did he 
 Succeed, and went to bed in a condition 
 That the rover would have envied. 
 
 Tis ever thus that the untutored savage, 
 
 Who yearning after nature s means and measures, 
 
 With pure and child-like instinct seeks to ravage 
 The dim arcana of its mystic pleasures, 
 And wrest from nature s vault its cryptic treasures. 
 
 While by his side, clogged with redundant learning, 
 
 The proud Caucasian swears, and gets left, yearning. 
 
 CHAOS. 
 
 I ve seen the ice-clad river leave its banks, 
 And tear through hills of time-enduring rock; 
 
 Squadrons I ve seen, that charging ranks on ranks. 
 Did make the planet tremble with their shock. 
 
 I ve seen red navies with their walls of oak 
 Sink like a. bubble in the frantic main; 
 
 I ve seen proud cities wander off in smoke; 
 I ve seen autumnal ruin sweep the plain. 
 
 I ve stood at midnight on the rocky height 
 That bars the purple meadows of the west; 
 
 I ve seen the silent empress of the night 
 
 Sail slowly on while splendoring crest on crest. 
 
72 RHYMES OF 1RONQUILL. 
 
 But never have I seen, in earth or air, 
 Plot, reason, relevancy. I scan 
 
 An unplanned chaos, shaping here and ther; 
 The greatness and the littleness of man. 
 
 KEEFE VS. GILLON. 
 
 [A winter controversy.] 
 
 The oyster war 
 
 Still rages on the field; 
 Like last year s wheat crop, 
 
 Neither one will "yield." 
 
 On Market street, 
 
 The war-like chieftain G-illon, 
 Much oyster soup 
 
 Down hungry throats is spillin. 
 
 While down on Main 
 
 We hear the dreadful strife; 
 Keefe heads his phalanx 
 
 With an oyster knife. 
 
 It is the strangest war 
 
 I ever saw; 
 Chiefs in a "stew," 
 
 And the recruits all "raw." 
 
 A ghastly pun 
 
 Across our conscience flits: 
 Let s call this war, 
 
 The fight of oyster-litz. 
 
THE KANSAS DUO-OUT. 73 
 
 THE PYTHIAN. 
 
 I am the sybil of the right divine, 
 
 Who spoke the sayings of the Delphic shrine; 
 
 In after years this saying you ll recall, 
 "Marry the man who loves thee most of all;" 
 And who he is thou needest never guess, 
 Who chatters most is he who loves the less. 
 
 THE KANSAS DUG-OUT. 
 
 Stuck into a Kansas hillside, far away, 
 Is a cabin made of sod and built to stay; 
 
 Through the window-like embrazure 
 Pours the mingled gold and azure 
 Of the morning of a gorgeous Kansas day. 
 
 Round the cabin clumps of roses, here and there, 
 With their wild and welcome fragrance fill the air; 
 And the love Of heaven settles 
 On their pensive pink-lined petals, 
 As the angels come and put them in their hair. 
 
 Blue-eyed children round the cabin chase the day; 
 They are learning life s best lesson how to stay,, 
 
 To be tireless and resistful; 
 
 And the antelope look wistful, 
 And they want to join the children in their play. 
 
74: RHYME 8 OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Fortune-wrecked the parents sought the open "West. 
 Leaving happy homes and friends they loved the best; 
 
 Homes in cities bright and busy 
 
 That responded to the dizzy, 
 To the whirling and tumultuous unrest. 
 
 Oft it happens unto families and men 
 
 That they need must touch the mother earth again; 
 
 Rising, rugged and reliant, 
 
 Like Aiitseus, the old giant, 
 Then they dare to do great things, and not till then. 
 
 As around his neck the arms of children twine, 
 Then the father says: Have courage, children mine; 
 
 Though the skies around thee blacken, 
 
 Courage! the gales will slacken; 
 And the future with its promise shall be thine. 
 
 Happy prairie children! Time with rapid wings 
 To the earnest soul the golden trophy brings. 
 
 As the Trojan said: "Durate 
 
 Vosmet rebus et servate"* 
 "Hold yourselves in hand for higher, nobler things." 
 
 id, I, 207. 
 
FEAR YE HIM." 75 
 
 FEAR YE HIM." 
 
 I fear Him not, 
 
 Nor yet 
 Do I defy. 
 
 Much could He harm me, 
 Cared he but to try. 
 
 Much could He frighten 
 
 Me, 
 
 Much do me ill, 
 Much terrify me, 
 But He never will. 
 
 The soul of justice 
 
 Must 
 
 Itself be just; 
 Who trembles most 
 Betrays the most distrust. 
 
 So, plunging in life s 
 
 Current 
 
 Deep and broad, 
 I take my chances, 
 Ignorant unawed. 
 
76 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 ALGOMAR 
 
 loline, my loline, 
 
 Will you be no more my queen ; 
 
 Must you always stay? 
 Is my waiting unavailing ; 
 Must all wishes end in failing, 
 
 Must all hope decay? 
 Must all happiness at last 
 Fade into the past ? 
 
 It is longer than a year 
 
 Since you came to see me here, 
 
 Earnest loline ; 
 
 Since you came in moonlight beamy, 
 Came to cheer me and to see me, 
 
 To be loved and seen ; 
 Since you left that pearly star, 
 Far off Algomar. 
 
 Come and sing to me once more, 
 As you often have before, 
 
 Songs of other zones. 
 Come and hum those airy, sketchy 
 Arias, so bright and catchy, 
 
 Taken from the tones 
 That, unheard by human ears, 
 Thrill the radiant spheres. 
 
JOHN BROWN. 77 
 
 GLORY. 
 
 A rocket scaled the terraces of night, 
 And yet 
 Reached not the parapet. 
 
 I told a noble hearted friend of mine 
 That he, 
 Though great, still greater yet should be. 
 
 He rose as did Acestes arrow rise, 
 He burned, 
 And burning, into ashes turned. 
 
 He rose, and rising blazed, and burned away, 
 And yet 
 He failed to reach the parapet. 
 
 JOHN BROWN. 
 
 States are not great 
 Except as men may make them; 
 Men are not great except they do and dare. 
 
 But States, like men, 
 Have destinies that take them 
 That bear them on, not knowing why or where. 
 
78 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 The WHY repels 
 The philosophic searcher 
 The WHY and WHERE all questionings defy, 
 
 Until we find, 
 
 Far back in youthful nurture, 
 Prophetic facts that constitute the WHY. 
 
 All merit comes 
 From daring the unequal; 
 All glory comes from daring to begin. 
 
 Fame loves the State 
 That, reckless of the sequel, 
 Fights long and well, though it may lose or win. 
 
 Than in our State 
 No illustration apter v 
 Is seen or found of faith, and hope, and will. 
 
 Take up her story: 
 Every leaf and chapter 
 Contains a record that conveys a thrill. 
 
 And there is one 
 
 Whose faith, whose fight, whose failing, 
 Fame yet shall placard on the walls of time. 
 
 He dared begin 
 Despite the unavailing; 
 He dared begin, when failure was a crime. 
 
JOHN BROWN. 79 
 
 When over Africa 
 Some future cycle 
 Shall sweep the lake-gemmed uplands with its surge; 
 
 When, as with trumpet 
 Of Archangel Michael, 
 Culture shall bid a colored race emerge; 
 
 When busy cities 
 There, in constellations, 
 Shall gleam with spires and palaces and domes, 
 
 With marts wherein 
 Are heard the noise of nations; 
 With summer groves surrounding stately homes 
 
 There, future orators 
 To cultured freemen 
 Shall tell of valor, and recount with praise 
 
 Stories of Kansas, 
 And of Lacedgemon 
 Cradles of freedom, then of ancient days. 
 
 From boulevards 
 Overlooking both Nyanzas, 
 The statured bronze shall glitter in the sun, 
 With rugged lettering: 
 
 "JOHN BROWN, OF KANSAS: 
 
 HE DARED BEGIN; 
 
 HE LOST, 
 
 BUT, LOSING, WON." 
 
80 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 LIFE S MOONRISE. 
 
 No sunrise, no noon, no sunset; 
 
 On the prairie, like a pall, 
 All day hung the storm, and from it 
 
 A heart ache did seem to fall. 
 
 In the evening all was over, 
 
 And the moon rose round and high, 
 
 While pure as the love of an angel 
 Grew the glittering, starlit sky. 
 
 And the red deer and the primrose 
 And the prairie larks were gay, 
 
 Till night, with its filmy beauty, 
 
 Was merged in the broad, bright day. 
 
 Some lives have a cloudless sunrise, 
 And some have a noontide bright; 
 
 o 
 
 And others a day of sunshine, 
 With rainy and cheerless night. 
 
 My life had been sad and rainy 
 Through its long and somber day, 
 
 Till at last there did come the moonrise 
 As the storm-clouds rolled away. 
 
 I m living now in life s moonrise, 
 For the day of my youth has set; 
 
 But there comes to me no suggestion 
 Of sorrow, or vain regret. 
 
WHITHER. 81 
 
 I m seeing new worlds and planets 
 Flash out from the evening sky, 
 
 And my soul feels a wild, new daring 
 As the night wind whispers by. 
 
 I m taking 110 heed of the future, 
 Nor a past that has flown away; 
 
 And I m simply hoping the moonlight 
 May merge in the broad, bright day. 
 
 LEGOUSIN AI. 
 
 [From the Greek of Anacreon.] 
 
 The women say: 
 
 "Anacreon, you are cftd; 
 
 For, taking up a mirror, you behold 
 The locks of rosy youth how scattered they." 
 
 But as a care, 
 
 It is not unto me 
 
 How old am I, how few my locks may be, 
 So long as youth s young spirit still is there. 
 
 WHITHER. 
 
 Beside a pool where curved a Kansas brook, 
 Trying to fish, a boy stood brown and tan; 
 
 A lump of lead held down a baited hook, 
 And as I watched the eager little man 
 
 From thought to thought some strange suggestions ran. 
 
82 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Perhaps the soul, as if imprisoned here, 
 Is weighted down with lump of heavy clay, 
 
 Beneath the ocean of the atmosphere; 
 
 Fain would it rise, and yet perforce must stay, 
 
 Deep in the night, yet which we think the day. 
 
 At times we feel as if a line did draw, 
 
 Then it does seem as if we rose, and light 
 
 Does seem to come; and then some unknown law 
 Does seem to pull us backward in our flight, 
 
 And hold us to the bottom of the night. 
 
 MEPICINE. 
 
 [ The Fort Scott doctors organized under the statute into a medical society, 
 and, the majority being old school, " heroic," doctors, refused admittance to a 
 lady doctor of their own class, and to all homoeopath 1 sts.J 
 
 CHAPTER I. ANCIENT. 
 
 In the days of the twelve apostles, 
 The strangest the earth hath seen, 
 
 When through the Judean cities, 
 With the lowly Nazarene, 
 
 They healed all the gathered people 
 Of populous Palestine; 
 
 When pouring from town and village, 
 On the litter and on the crutch, 
 
 The populace sought the apostles, 
 Praising them overmuch, 
 
 Who, standing beside the Nazarene, 
 Healed all with the mystic touch; 
 
MEDICINE. 83 
 
 Then many a lonely woman, 
 
 From many a distant route, 
 From the sea coast, from the lake side, 
 
 From the mountains and hills about, 
 Applied to the twelve apostles, 
 
 Who cast all the devils out. 
 
 CHAPTER II. MODERN. 
 
 The doctors of Bourbon county, 
 
 In a conclave grim and great, 
 They met and they bound together 
 
 By a statute of the State, 
 And the way they cast out devils 
 
 Is ludicrous to relate. 
 
 Then one of them spake, "This quackery, 
 
 My feeling with anger thrills; 
 These fraudulent homoeopathists, 
 
 They even can t cure the chills; 
 And what in the world can a woman know 
 
 In regard to a woman s ills? 
 
 The meeting then went to business 
 
 In a manner extremely human; 
 They scooped the illustrious dozen 
 
 In proficiency and acumen, 
 For they cast not only the devils out, 
 
 But they even cast out the woman. 
 
84 RHYMES OF ItiONQUILL. 
 
 THE SIEGE OF DJKLXPRWBZ. 
 
 Before a Turkish town, 
 
 The Russians came, 
 And with huge cannon 
 
 Did bombard the same. 
 
 They got up close 
 
 And rained fat bombshells down, 
 And blew out every 
 
 Vowel in the town. 
 
 And then the Turks, 
 
 Becoming somewhat sad, 
 
 Surrendered every 
 Consonant they had. 
 
 A HOLY WAR. 
 
 [The Russo-Turkish campaign.] 
 
 On the south is seen an empire, 
 Mosque and minaret, in frenzy, 
 From the Ind to Adriatic, 
 
 Send their influence and riches; 
 Arid the holy shrine of Mecca 
 Pours out gold and absolution, 
 While it speeds the Prophet s children 
 
 To the hospitals and ditches. 
 
PARESIS. 85 
 
 On the north a Christian empire 
 In the name of Christ is acting; 
 Mobs, to gain a benediction, 
 
 Rally round a bishop s mitre; 
 And they use the church s treasure, 
 In the holy name of Jesus, 
 While they march away His children 
 
 To the vulture and the nitre. 
 
 We may hope to see an era 
 That has fewer orphan children 
 That objects to shrieking bugle 
 
 And the sight of blazing village 
 When religion, in the future, 
 Shall refuse to be the agent 
 By which merciless ambition 
 
 Furthers schemes of public pillage. 
 
 PARESIS. 
 
 On the shores of Yellow Paint 
 I have heard the tempest roar; 
 
 I have heard the falling crash 
 Of the lightning-riven ash; 
 Seen the branches of the oak 
 Like the world at large, half-broke, 
 Seen the shattered sycamore. 
 
86 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Men and trees are scarcely twain, 
 And the rules alike obtain, 
 
 For the highest of renown 
 Are the surest stricken down; 
 But the stupid and the clown 
 They remain. 
 
 THE OLD PIONEER. 
 
 Where are they gone? Where are they 
 
 The faces of my childhood ? 
 I ve sought them by the mountains, 
 
 By the rivers, by the canyons; 
 I have called upon the prairie, 
 
 I have called upon the wildwood: 
 O, give me back! O, give me back 
 
 The faces of my childhood! 
 The boys and girls, 
 
 My playmates, my companions. 
 
 The days of early childhood 
 
 Have a strange, attractive glimmer, 
 A lustrous, misty fadelessness 
 
 Half seen and yet half hidden, 
 As of isles in distant oceans, 
 
 Where the shattered moonbeams shimmer, 
 Concealing half, disclosing half, 
 
 With rapturing, fracturing o^ 
 The realms in which 
 
 Our visits are forbidden. 
 
THE VIOLET STAR. 87 
 
 It s vainly that I call upon 
 
 The mountains or the canyons; 
 And vainly from the forest, 
 
 From the river or the wildwood, 
 Do I ask the restoration 
 
 Of my playmates, my companions; 
 No voice returns from mountain side, 
 
 From forest or from canyons; 
 They ve gone from me forever, 
 
 The faces of my childhood. 
 
 THE VIOLET STAR. 
 
 "I have always lived, and I always must," 
 
 The sergeant said, when the fever came; 
 From his burning brow we washed the dust, 
 And we held his hand, and we spoke his name. 
 
 "Millions of ages have come and gone," 
 
 The sergeant said as we held his hand; 
 
 They have passed like the mist of the morning dawn 
 Since I left my home in that far off land." 
 
 We bade him hush, but he gave no heed 
 "Millions of orbits I crossed from far 
 Drifted as drifts the cotton wood seed; 
 I came," said he, "from the Violet Star. 
 
88 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Drifting in cycles from place to place 
 
 I m tired," said he, "and I m going home 
 To the Violet Star, in the realms of space, 
 Where I loved to live, and I will not roam. 
 
 "For I ve always lived, and I always must, 
 
 And the soul in roaming may roam too far; 
 I have reached the verge that I dare not trust, 
 And I m going back to the Violet Star." 
 
 The sergeant hushed, and we fanned his cheek; 
 
 There came no word from that soul so tired; 
 And the bugle rang from the distant peak, 
 
 As the morning dawned and the pickets fired. 
 
 The sergeant was buried as soldiers are; 
 
 And we thought all day, as we marched through 
 
 the dust: 
 His spirit has gone to the Violet Star 
 
 He always has lived, and he always must. 
 
 THE anchors are strong that hold the ships; 
 
 The wire is strong that bridges the fall; 
 But all of their strength must suffer eclipse 
 Compared with the words of a woman s lips, 
 
 For she binds the man that has made them all. 
 
LEWIS V. THE STATE. 89 
 
 IN THE SUPREME COURT, STATE OF KANSAS. 
 
 GEORGE LEWIS, Appellant, 
 
 vs. 
 STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee. 
 
 Appeal from Atchison County. 
 
 SYLLABUS. 
 
 Law paw; guilt wilt. When upon thy frame the law places 
 its majestic paw though in innocence or guilt thou art then 
 required to wilt. 
 
 STATEMENT OF CASE BY REPORTER. 
 This defendant, while at large, 
 Was arrested on a charge 
 Of burglarious intent, 
 And direct to jail he went. 
 But he somehow felt misused, 
 And through prison walls he oozed, 
 And in some unheard-of shape 
 He effected his escape. 
 
 Mark you now! again the law 
 On defendant placed its paw, 
 Like a hand of iron mail, 
 And resocked him into jail; 
 Which said jail, while so corralled. 
 He by sock-age tenure held. 
 
90 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Then the court met, and they tried 
 Lewis up and down each side, 
 On the good, old-fashioned plan; 
 But the jury cleared the man. 
 
 Now, you think that this strange case 
 Ends at just about this place. 
 Nay, not so. Again the law 
 On defendant placed its paw 
 This time takes him round the cape 
 For effecting an escape; 
 He, unable to give bail, 
 Goes reluctantly to jail. 
 
 Lewis, tried for this last act, 
 Makes a special plea of fact: 
 "Wrongly did they me arrest, 
 As my trial did attest. 
 And while rightfully at large. 
 Taken on a wrongful charge, 
 I took back from them what they 
 From me wrongly took away." 
 
 When this special plea was heard, 
 Thereupon THE STATE demurred. 
 
 The defendant then was pained 
 When the court was heard to say, 
 In a cold, impassive way 
 "The demurrer is sustained." 
 
LEWIS V. THE STATE. 91 
 
 Back to jail did Lewis go; 
 
 But, as liberty is dear, 
 
 He appeals, and now is here 
 To reverse the court below. 
 
 The opinion will contain 
 
 All the statements that remain. 
 
 ARGUMENT AND BRIEF OF APPELLANT. 
 
 1 -As a matter, sir, of fact, 
 Who was injured by our act 
 Any property or man? 
 Point it out, sir, if you can. 
 Can you seize us when at large 
 On a baseless, trumped-up charge; 
 And, if we escape, then say 
 It is crime to get away 
 When we rightfully regained 
 What was wrongfully obtained? 
 
 " Please-the-court-sir, what is crime? 
 
 What is right, and what is wrong? 
 Is-our freedom but a song, 
 Or the subject of a rhyme?" 
 
 ARGUMENT AND BRIEF OF THE ATTORNEY FOR 
 THE STATE. 
 
 When THE STATE, that is to say, 
 WE, takes liberty away 
 When the padlock and the hasp 
 Leave one helpless in our grasp, 
 It s unlawful then that he 
 Even dreams of liberty; 
 
92 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Wicked dreams that may in time 
 Grow and ripen into crime 
 Crime of dark and damning shape; 
 Then if he perchance escape, 
 Evermore remorse will roll 
 O er his shattered, sin-sick soul. 
 
 " Please-the-court-sir, how can we 
 Manage people who get free?" 
 
 REPLY OF APPELLANT. 
 
 " Please-the-court-sir, if it s sm, 
 Where does turpitude begin?" 
 
 PER CURIAM. (OPINION OF THE COURT.) 
 
 We-don t-make-law; we are bound 
 To interpret it as found. 
 
 "The defendant broke away; 
 When arrested he should stay. 
 
 This appeal can t be maintained, 
 For the record does not show 
 Error in the court below, 
 And we nothing can infer. 
 Let the judgment be sustained; 
 All the justices concur." 
 
 \Note by the Reporter.] 
 
 Of the sheriff, rise and sing: 
 
 "Glory to our earthly King!" 
 
 (19Kas.25G.) 
 
THE LEAP-YEAR PARTY. 93 
 
 THE LEAP-YEAR PARTY. 
 
 Around the hall 
 I see the fairies trooping, 
 
 In merry promenade; 
 
 Along the wall, 
 Disconsolately drooping, 
 
 Masculine wall-flowers fade. 
 
 Those hands which once 
 They squoze with solemn rapture, 
 
 Days of old, 
 
 Are now beyond 
 All present power to capture 
 
 Or to hold. 
 
 And now the caller, 
 Cum, volante grando. 
 
 Shrieks down the hall; 
 
 Anon the orchestra, 
 With harsh sforzando, 
 
 Insists on "balance all." 
 
 0, temporal 
 The present time and custom 
 
 The atmospheric spirit of the age, 
 
 Have made these women 
 So we cannot trust ; em. 
 
 Who knows what ills the present 
 may presage? 
 
94 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Of that event 
 The deepening shadows lengthen; 
 
 While far away 
 
 We see the fast 
 Combining clouds, that strengthen 
 
 Our terror of that day. 
 
 MONO-LINE. 
 
 I straid, I strode upon the ocean strand, 
 
 The loud waves flaled the bolder-drifted shore; 
 I stopt, I stoopt, and with dejected hand 
 I wrote Ma-ri-er s name upon the sand 
 Her cherished name upon the sanded flore. 
 
 Ere had I written, came a bilious wave 
 Remorseless, fiend-like, ruthlessly it came 
 
 Fane would I brest it off, fane would I save; 
 
 But overwhelmingly, into a grave 
 
 Of senseless sand it slung that sacred name. 
 
 I sat me down upon primeval rock; 
 
 Still flaled the waves the bolder-drifted shore 
 It seemed as if me troubled heart would knock 
 Itself to pieces, since the sorrow shock 
 
 That wrung me writing from that sanded flore. 
 
MONO-LINE. 95 
 
 I ll take a pine from Alpine summit stript 
 A pine, me-said, whose size will shadow all; 
 
 And down in Etna s burning lava diped, 
 
 I ll make a torch, titanic, terror-tipped, 
 
 While horror wraps this mundane with its pall. 
 
 On heaven s blue dome, o er nebula and star, 
 
 Where all the terror-stricken world can see, 
 Distinct and clear, my mono-line I ll char, 
 In words of fire the zones may read from far 
 Ma-ri-er s name that mono-line shall be. 
 
 Rise, ocean, rise! Rise as thou hastest rose! 
 
 Houl, ocean, houl! Thy waves may rore, may moiie 
 May flale the bolders, and such things as those; 
 But He bet you some 14-dollar clothes 
 
 That you just leave that mono-line aloan. 
 
 MILLIONS of bad men have the world called good, 
 
 Millions of good the world called black and bad; 
 Millions of cowards, strangely understood, 
 Have passed for heroes when they never should; 
 Million of heroes never praise have had; 
 And cravens will the name of honor rob 
 Until the pulse of time shall cease to throb. 
 
96 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 TO-DAY. 
 
 Work on, work on, 
 
 Work wears the world away: 
 Hope when to-morrow comes, 
 
 But work to-day. 
 
 Work on, work on, 
 
 Work brings its own relief; 
 He who most idle is 
 
 Has most of grief. 
 
 EL MOHAN. 
 
 I crossed the orbit of Aldebaran, 
 
 Thence sixteen orbits to Taurus Rho, 
 
 As goes a boat through a chain of whirlpools 
 Into the slumbrous lake below. 
 
 I passed a hundred of constellations; 
 
 At last I came to an open place, 
 And saw in the distance the waves of ether 
 
 Breaking in foam on the cliffs of space. 
 
 While gazing alone, I felt a question. 
 
 But nothing either I saw or heard. 
 A soul was beside me; I felt a presence, 
 
 Seeing no soul, nor hearing a word. 
 
EL MORAN. 97 
 
 And where and whence are you from and going? 
 
 I thought as quickly; who can you be? 
 Then came a suspense, as of hesitation 
 
 This was the answer it thought at me: 
 
 I lost my life in a mine explosion 
 
 A week ago in the planet Mars; 
 I thought I would look up a new location. 
 
 Are you acquainted among the stars?" 
 
 I answered: No; I was killed by lightning 
 
 Yesterday morning in Hindostan; 
 I visit the old ancestral homestead 
 
 Back in the nebula El Moran. 
 
 We both recounted the past and present; 
 
 We watched the asteroids weaving lace, 
 And the berylline waves of viewless ether 
 
 Pounding the shoreless cliffs of space. 
 
 TYPE. 
 
 All night the sky was draped in darkness thick; 
 Out from the clouds imprisoned lightnings swept. 
 
 Into the printer s stick, 
 
 With energetic click, 
 The ranks of type into battalions crept, 
 Which formed brigades while dreaming labor slept; 
 And ere dawn s crimson pennons were unfurled, 
 The night-formed columns charged the waking world. 
 
98 RHYMES OF JJiONQUILL. 
 
 THE PRAIRIE STORM. 
 
 With the daylight came the storm; 
 
 And the clouds, like ragged veils, 
 Trailed the prairie until noontide, 
 
 Borne by vacillating gales; 
 And the red elms by the streamlets 
 Dripped upon the wild plum thickets, 
 And the thickets on the crickets 
 And the quails. 
 
 Wet and sodden 
 Lay the prairie grass untrodden. 
 
 Through the dismal afternoon 
 
 Held the banks of cloud aloof, 
 Like as smoke in frontier cabin 
 Hugs the rafters in the roof. 
 Broke the clouds and ceased the dripping. 
 And the red elms by the streamlets 
 Caught the fading evening gleamlets 
 That in proof, 
 
 Grave the token 
 That the summer storm was broken. 
 
 With a nimbus like a saint 
 
 Rose the white moon in the east; 
 
 And the grass all rose together 
 As the guests do at a feast; 
 
CHILDHOOD. 99 
 
 And the prairie lark kept singing 
 All the night, and the stirring 
 And the whizzing and the whirring 
 Still increased; 
 
 Till all sorrow 
 Yielded to the brilliant morrow. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 It passed in beauty, 
 
 Like the waves that reach 
 Their jeweled fingers 
 
 Up the sanded beach. 
 
 It passed in beauty, 
 
 Like the flowers that spring 
 Behind the footsteps 
 
 Of the winter king. 
 
 It passed in beauty. 
 
 Like the clouds on high, 
 
 That drape the ceilings 
 Of the summer sky. 
 
100 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 INGALL8 VS. VOORHEES. 
 
 Cyclone dense, 
 
 Lurid air, 
 
 Wabash hair, 
 Hide on fence. 
 
 WINTER. 
 
 The sleet 
 
 Will beat, 
 
 And the snpw 
 
 Will blow, 
 
 And the rain 
 
 Will drain 
 
 From the plain 
 
 So sadly; 
 
 And the night come down 
 
 So bleak and brown. 
 
 While the blast 
 
 Shrieks past 
 
 So fast 
 
 And madly. 
 
WAR-FAEE. 101 
 
 THE REASON. 
 
 Says John last night: 
 
 "William, by-grab, I m beat 
 To know why stolen kisses 
 
 Taste so sweet." 
 
 Says William: "Sho! 
 
 That s easily explained 
 It s cause they re syrnp- 
 
 titiously obtained." 
 
 O cruel thought! 
 
 O words of cruel might! 
 The coroner 
 
 He sat on John that night. 
 
 WAR-FARE. 
 
 Oh, what a horrid thing this warfare is!" 
 Then Jim replied, "You re very much mistaken; 
 
 I joined the home-guards when Price threatened 
 
 Scott, 
 And then our fare was hard-bread, coffee, bacon." 
 
 ; The fare of war, I am not talking of ! " 
 Responded William, with an angry shout; 
 
 : Oh, yes, I see," says Jim; "well, of the war, 
 The fare s all I know anything about. " 
 
102 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 THE LOVIST. 
 
 A TRUE STORY. 
 
 Look here, you gentle reader, 
 
 A story I must tell, 
 About an individual 
 
 Who loved a maiden well. 
 
 [He admired and adored her doted and gloated 
 and floated; one of his favorite observations was, that 
 her dear image was frescoed on the skylight of his soul. ] 
 
 He wrote one day a letter, 
 
 And sealed it with a seal, 
 To tell the girl how feelingly 
 
 Towards her he did feel. 
 
 [ This letter partook of the character of a rhythmical 
 communication; it might have been called an ode, or 
 an apostrophe, or a sonnet, or a piece of versified 
 vacuity, or iambic inanity but it wasn t poetry.] 
 
 The young man said: "It idle is 
 
 For me to ever start 
 To paint in one short idyl 
 
 The idol of my heart. " 
 
 [ What the adolescent young maniac wanted to paint 
 her for nobody will ever know. He called her his ideal, 
 idol, doll, his fairy, seraph, duck, nymph, grace, and 
 he showed other surface indications of having the old 
 complaint in its most frightful form.] 
 
THE LOVI8T. 103 
 
 A carpenter of teeth was he, 
 
 A den-tist, and I m told 
 That in his den he often said 
 
 That teeth were his "best hold. " 
 
 [He was "bad" on eye-teeth, yanked out cuspids 
 and bicuspids, snatched out grinders, exterminated 
 molars and abolished incisors without pain or delay. 
 His motto was, "pro bono publico" for the public s 
 bones. ] 
 
 But when the miss the miss-ive read, 
 
 The maiden sentimental, 
 She said, said she, "If he gets me, 
 It will be acci-dental. " 
 
 [She told this, in confidence, to a young lady friend, 
 who put on her hood and rushed right off and told the 
 young man, so as to make him feel happy. He asked 
 the young lady to intercede for him. She did so, tu 
 the "charmer" simply responded :] 
 
 Who knows, before the orange blos 
 soms wither in my wreath, 
 What irony and iron he 
 
 May throw into my teeth?" 
 
 [The "mutual" friend saw that the embassy was a 
 failure, and so she . waited all the forenoon until her 
 mother went out to saw some wood to get dinner with; 
 then she skipped down to see the doctor and make him 
 feel pleasant. She told him all, with usual embellish 
 ments she not only gave him the "text," but also 
 an elaborate appendix, with notes, index and glossary.] 
 
104 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 And when the young man heard of it, 
 
 He then began to cry; 
 He stopped a-drawing of a tooth, 
 
 And went and drew a sigh. 
 
 ["Why," said he, "this sarcasm, this scornful utter 
 ance, this taunt, this sneer, this gibe? I have," said 
 he "nary not no nothing to live for."] 
 
 He done took sick; he tried and tried 
 
 To neutralize, in vain, 
 The pain he felt, by wrapping up 
 
 Within a counter-pane. 
 
 [But it wouldn t work; he tried to die by an effort 
 of mind, but his mind was too weak his constitution 
 was stronger than his will. This was before the tonic 
 action of phosphorus on the brain was discovered. He 
 tried whisky, but it never affected him it never found 
 his brain; it went skirmishing through his system and 
 wore itself out trying to find some ganglionic nodule to 
 work on. He consequently recovered next day suffi 
 ciently to go down town.] 
 
 And then he bought a Bowie knife 
 
 With which to end his woes; 
 Then went and plunged it in his chest, 
 
 [Which was half full of clothes;] 
 
 Then went and bought a railroad pass, 
 
 And took the evening train 
 For climes where golden fortunes are 
 
 "Extracted without pain." 
 
THE CRUSADES. 1()5 
 
 THE CRUSADES. 
 
 The one I love so much sits by my side 
 
 Sits by my side and listens as I read. 
 Little care we how o er the prairies wide 
 The wintry, zero-loving tempests glide, 
 As one by one the fire-lit hours recede. 
 In one of mine I hold her little hands 
 And read to her of wars in distant lands. 
 
 I read to her of times long passed away, 
 
 That shine like jewels in the wild Crusades; 
 That light up cities crumbling in decay, 
 That out of darkness bring the glare of day, 
 Which glare again to greater darkness fades. 
 I read to her of princes and of seers, 
 Of cruelties, of sufferings, of tears. 
 
 I read to her of hermits and of kings, 
 
 Of Conrad, Tancred, Baldwin and Behmond; 
 I read to her of bravery that springs 
 Of wild fanaticism, whose strong wings 
 
 Take, in their sweep, this world and the beyond 
 And, as I read, the gusty tempests rage, 
 As if in sympathy with every page. 
 
 8 
 
106 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 AN AGREED STATEMENT OF FACTS 
 
 As TO THE ADMISSION OF MR. Hie JONES TO 
 THE PAINT CREEK BAR, KANSAS. 
 
 Jones was young and unassuming, but the shrewd ob 
 server saw, 
 
 Something that appeared abnormal in the structure of 
 his jaw. 
 
 When the court convened, old Snipe- 1 em. with a voice 
 like a guitar, 
 
 Offered Jones s application for admission to the bar. 
 
 Then the court looked wise and owly, and in slow, judi 
 cial tones 
 
 Ordered Snipe- em, Brown and Spot- em first to analyze 
 young Jones, 
 
 Saying, "Gentlemen, be thorough; at the opening of 
 the court, 
 
 We will skip the motion docket and consider your 
 report." 
 
 Sheriff Grabb then showed the party to the "ante"- 
 room up-stairs, 
 
 Where a table stacked with gun-wads had been check 
 mated with chairs. 
 
 It was four o clock precisely; Spot- em gently turned 
 the key, 
 
 Saying, " Frauds, I ll act as banker waltz your ducats 
 up to me." 
 
HIC JONES. 107 
 
 The analysis proceeded until twelve or thereabout, 
 When the stock of ardent spirits unexpectedly gave out. 
 Spot- em wrote a note to Julius, saying, "Julius, if you 
 
 please, 
 Send us up a red-hot lunch for four; we re raking down 
 
 for threes." 
 And an order for frumenti and cigars was sent by 
 
 Brown, 
 Drawn on Thomas, of the "Wilder," chief nose-artist of 
 
 the town. 
 
 The committee stopped for supper, readjusted all their 
 loans, 
 
 And proceeded with fresh vigor in their researches for 
 Jones. 
 
 Just about this time, ; the District Clerk of the afore 
 said Court," 
 
 By some unknown coincidence, dropped in to see the 
 sport. 
 
 Having hefted the frumenti, he did cheerfully reply 
 
 To their bland interrogations in regard to "chicken- 
 pie." 
 
 Unpaid fees in Spot- em s cow case then were discounted 
 by Brown, 
 
 Which the clerk took out in gun-wads, most of which 
 young Jones raked down. 
 
 At the hour of three precisely, after four successful 
 
 raids, 
 Spot- em raked down Snipe- em s shirt studs on a hand 
 
 composed of spades; 
 
108 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Snipe- em took a dose of tonic, and reluctantly resigned, 
 While the clerk, with sad bravado, went a collar-button 
 
 blind. 
 Hour by hour the game continued; Jones came in on 
 
 every draw, 
 But no syllable proceeded from that strange, abnormal 
 
 jaw. 
 
 On a bench snoozed Snipe- em, sadly, in the corner of 
 the room, 
 
 While the smoked-up coal-oil chimney cast a deep, 
 sepulchral gloom; 
 
 And at times his troubled slumbering evoked uncon 
 scious moans, 
 
 As if saying, "It is difficult this analyzing Jones." 
 
 At last the time at which the court should reassemble 
 
 came; 
 
 It did not seem to influence the progress of the game; 
 They yet had not made up their minds concerning their 
 
 report, 
 And here we leave them briefly while we look in on the 
 
 court. 
 
 A pro tern, judge was on the bench; two members of 
 
 the bar 
 Assaulted twelve one-gallows men with words of legal 
 
 war. 
 
NIC JONES. 109 
 
 The way was this: It seems that Smith, in opening his 
 
 case, 
 
 Had told the jury carelessly, as of some time or place, 
 That he had seen a real dead mule; his language was. 
 
 not pat 
 
 Of course nobody ever saw a mule as dead as that. 
 But still Smith was excusable- the heat of a debate 
 May lead a man unconsciously to slightly overstate. 
 Zeal for a client s lawsuit the more if it be weak 
 May make a lawyer s language go impalpably oblique. 
 But still, upon the other hand, an orator, forsooth, 
 Should try and keep his statements within gunshot of 
 
 the truth; 
 
 And Smith was very careless in observance of the rule 
 To make so rash a statement in regard to any mule. 
 Its absurdness never struck him, for he never stopped 
 
 to think; 
 All at once he dropped upon it when he saw a juror 
 
 wink. 
 
 Now if Smith had been sagacious, he immediately then 
 Would have modified that statement to those twelve^ 
 
 one-gallows men- 
 Would have intimated mildly that it might have been a 
 
 horse, 
 But he didn t; conscience smote him, and he sank down 
 
 with remorse 
 Folded up as folds a primrose when the gates of day are 
 
 shut; 
 Folded up as folds a jack-knife when a chaw of plug is 
 
 cut. 
 
HO RHYMES OF IRONQ.UILL. 
 
 The greater our experience the surer do we find 
 Eemarks should be adaptable unto the hearer s mind. 
 Twelve preachers might have took it in, but Smith 
 
 could never fool 
 Twelve citizens of Turkey Creek with reference to the 
 
 mule. 
 
 Then up rose lawyer Soak- em, and his lips were close 
 
 compressed, 
 His left hand gripped his coat tail, his right was on his 
 
 breast; 
 He gazed on the "palladium; " his look was stern and 
 
 high- 
 In thunder tones he emphasized Smith s statement as 
 
 a lie; 
 
 And then, in terms that Soak- em took occasion to adorn, 
 He branded him denounced him held him up to 
 
 public scorn, 
 
 Pointed his finger at him, and, in allegoric sense, 
 He peeled Smith s epidermis off and hung it 011 the 
 
 fence. 
 
 Then in a few pathetic words he made allusion to 
 The immortality of mules, which every juror knew. 
 The jury cheered the diction that in such profusion 
 
 came, 
 And Smith he writhed in agony of hopeless grief 
 
 and shame. 
 
 The jury then were eulogized appropriately neat 
 Of course they found for Soak- em without rising from 
 
 their seat. 
 
RIG JONES. HI 
 
 But how they reached the merits of the case is not so 
 
 clear, 
 
 For the action they were trying was replevin for a steer. 
 And then the restless, coatless, but appreciative crowd 
 Gave Smith "the great, big horse-laugh," and he sat 
 
 there cold and cowed. 
 
 Hereupon came Brown and Spot- em, Jones and Snipe- 
 
 em in the rear, 
 Arm in arm, each with his necktie dangling down below 
 
 his ear; 
 Each one made a short, spasmodic pull upon his 
 
 rumpled vest, 
 And, fronting up before the judge, the whole platoon 
 
 right-dressed. 
 
 "Hie your honor," said old Snipe- em, with a voice 
 diffuse, yet sweet, 
 
 "Hie we ve ma der zamination mor n er usual com 
 plete; 
 
 We ve jus gone hie thro er can idate; s proficiency 
 is fair." 
 
 "Hie you bet," said Brown, who eyed the court with 
 a mild, fishy glare. 
 
 " Went ri through hie Jones, "said Snipe- em; "he 
 
 z all ri hie on er law; 
 He can draw er chattel mortgage or three aces ever 
 
 draw; 
 
112 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Z got all Spot- em s tex-books and reports; mine too 
 
 hie haint he, Brown? 
 Young hie Jones has got er principal law libr y 
 
 now in town. 
 
 " Z got er bully mor l character Jones squarer an a 
 string; 
 
 Raised old Spot- em seventeen dollars, an he didn t 
 have a thing; 
 
 Z by all means admit hie Jones er bar; ! ose book 
 mus stay in town; 
 
 Hie old Spot s too full for utterance." "Zas so," re 
 sponded Brown. 
 
 "Clerk, swear Hie Jones," old pro tern, said, in lan 
 guage gruff and quick. 
 (The court supposed that Jones s antecedent name was 
 
 "Hie.") 
 Then the clerk said, somewhat vaguely, You do swear 
 
 hie from is date, 
 
 You will solem ny support er conistution of er State; 
 Be er lawyer of er bar from this date hie forthly 
 
 hence. 
 [Hold up er han ] all ri hie bob so help you 
 
 fifty cents." 
 Then the judge gave Jones a chromo; Jones received it 
 
 with delight, 
 And the whole platoon meandered, with a right flank 
 
 hie file right. 
 
HIG JONES. 
 
 So delighted was a juror that the shingle nail was bust 
 That did duty as a button where the juror s jeans were 
 
 trussed; 
 But the cardiac formation of young Smith was turned 
 
 to stone 
 Ah! how lurid Jones s future, and how dismal was his 
 
 own. 
 
 Years have passed, and Smith and Spot- em have ex 
 uded from the State; 
 
 Brown and Soak- em work for Findlay, in the coal bank, 
 lifting slate; 
 
 Snipe- em got in debt to every one, but Snipe- em never 
 frets 
 
 They made him go to Congress so that he could pay his 
 debts. 
 
 Jones is everywhere considered as a bright, peculiar star; 
 He s got one case they say will make his fortune at the 
 
 bar: 
 
 Ejectment for a dam-site on the shores of Yellow 
 Paint 
 
 On that boulder-drifted shore, 
 Where the angry billows roar, 
 
 And the women loudly snore, whether they re asleep or 
 ain t. 
 
 He wrote and now delivers an exceedingly fine lecture 
 On "Proceedings in Tribunals of Penultimate Con 
 jecture," 
 
114 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL, 
 
 And this very able thesis, though epitomised and short, 
 Contains the law for all the courts of dernier last re 
 sort. 
 
 Let us hope that Jones s future, so auspiciously begun, 
 May, like Snipe- em s outlawed due bills, have sufficient 
 time to run. 
 
 THE ORGAN GRINDER. 
 
 I m ignorant of music, but still, in spite of that, 
 I always drop a quarter in an organ grinder s hat. 
 
 I welcome on the pavement that old, familiar noise, 
 Around which there are gathered all the little girls and 
 
 boys, 
 While solemn, sad and hungry stands, a-turning at the 
 
 crank, 
 A nobleman of Europe from attenuated rank. 
 
 The nobleman chews plug, and gives, with organistic 
 
 glee, 
 A ballad of old Ireland, the jewel of the sea 
 
 II The most distracted country that we have ever seen; 
 They re hangin men and women there, for wearin of 
 
 the green, 
 
 For wearin of the green, for wearin of the green; 
 They re hangin men and women there, for wearin of 
 
 the green." 
 
THE ORGAN GRINDER. 115 
 
 And then I think of those who went away to war with 
 
 me 
 
 Who claimed a home in Ireland, the jewel of the sea; 
 My comrades and my messmates, none braver or more 
 
 true; 
 Holding aloft the stars and stripes, a-wearing of the 
 
 blue. 
 
 Alas! far down in Dixie their many graves are seen; 
 Beneath the grassy hillocks they are wearing of the 
 
 green. 
 
 Immortal little island! No other land or clime 
 Has placed more deathless heroes in the Pantheon of 
 time. 
 
 Anon the noble Roman brings his music to a halt; 
 There seems an indication of a neighboring revolt. 
 He takes a change of venue, of about a dozen feet, 
 And enfilades the windows that are fronting on the 
 
 street. 
 Around him whirl the girls and boys, with animated 
 
 glee. 
 Once more he grinds; I recognize " Der Deutscher Com- 
 
 panie. 
 
 Der Deutscher companie ish der beshtest companie 
 Whatever coomed across from der old Charmanee; 
 Der Deutscher companie, der Deutscher companie "- 
 The music bears me backward to the year of 63. 
 
116 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 I saw a German regiment step out from our brigade; 
 It marched across a meadow where a hundred cannon 
 
 played; 
 
 Its bugles hurled defiance; it skirmished up a slope 
 Amid a fire that gave no man a promise of a hope. 
 
 They fell like wheat; they came not back; at night na 
 
 bugles played 
 There was no German regiment attached to our brigade. 
 
 The world has seen thy valor, O land of song and vine! 
 
 Since Hermann plucked the eagles from the ramparts 
 of the Rhine. 
 
 Down valor s lustrous colonnade is seen the marble- 
 throng 
 
 Thy warriors and thy scholars, O land of vine and song. 
 
 About this time the nobleman is asked to take a rest; 
 The fires of indignation light his Romulistic breast. 
 He stops the crank; he gazes up, defiantly, yet mute, 
 While from the second story there proceeds an ancient 
 
 boot. 
 With steady gaze he watches it, and, like a man of 
 
 nerve, 
 He accurately calculates its hyperbolic curve. 
 
 He dodges it; he marches on; but soon this man of 
 Rome 
 
 Begins again to turn the crank Johnny comes march 
 ing home." 
 
 "When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah f 
 hurrah; 
 
THE ORGAN GRINDER. 117 
 
 When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, 
 hurrah 
 
 The women will sing, the men will shout, 
 The boys and girls will all turn out; 
 
 We ll all be gay when Johnny comes marching home." 
 
 And then I think of those again who went with me to 
 
 war 
 They knew where they were going, and what they went 
 
 there for. 
 They felt that there was little left of present or of 
 
 past, 
 
 Of hope, of home, of future, if the die was wrongly cast. 
 Fires smouldered at the firesides; when the Nation 
 
 called: "To arms!" 
 
 My comrades left the forests, the foundries, the farms, 
 They fought the Nation s battles, on the land and on 
 
 the sea 
 
 Alas ! alas ! no millionaire went off to war with me. 
 The merit of the country marched, and filled the Union 
 
 ranks 
 
 The money of the country marched, and filled the En 
 glish banks. 
 
 At last the war was over, and Johnny ceased to roam 
 He came with bugles playing; the specie sneaked back 
 
 home. 
 
 O, outcast organ grinder, thy simple ballads start 
 The frenzy of the cyclone through the highlands of my 
 heart. 
 
118 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Some sneer thy ragged music, because to them there 
 comes 
 
 No bawling of the bugles, no raving of the drums. 
 
 They hear no "boots and saddles " sounding in the mid 
 night chill; 
 
 They hear no angry cannon thunder up the rocky hill; 
 
 They hear no canteens rattle; they see no muskets shine, 
 
 As ranks sweep by in double quick to brace the skir 
 mish line. 
 
 Go play thy simple music, O friendless sport of fate! 
 The ballads of the people are the bulwarks of the state. 
 The bugles that hang dreaming now, like bats upon the 
 
 wall, 
 
 Remember well those choruses that rose above the call; 
 And in unconscious musings, those battered bugles see 
 The glories of the future in the centuries to be. 
 
 THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. 
 
 [Delivered to an editorial convention.] 
 
 Poems and poets and poetic lays 
 Have almost filled their missions and their days; 
 The times have passed when minstrels lyric strings 
 Depicted battles and applauded kings. 
 
 The time is past of sovereigns and seers; 
 The time is past of paladins and peers; 
 Once more again is coming on the stage 
 The long lost era of an iron age. 
 
THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. H9 
 
 The days of long-haired poets now are o er; 
 The short-haired poet seems to have the floor; 
 And now the world cannot attend to rhymes 
 That do not catch the spirit of the times. 
 
 Who cares who stole the coupons of old Croesus? 
 Who cares who stole the Thracian steeds of Rhesus? 
 Who cares how Menelaus lost his wife? 
 Who cares how Mr. Paris lost his life? 
 
 What matters it how Alba Longa grew, 
 Flourished, and plundered every one it knew? 
 To long-haired poets themes like these belong 
 The short-haired poet sings another song. 
 
 The short-haired poet has no muse nor chief; 
 He sings of corn; he eulogizes beef; 
 And in the springtime his aesthetic soul 
 Bursts forth in vernal eulogies on coal. 
 
 He thinks the sunflower nothing but a weed, 
 And thinks far less of fancy than of feed. 
 The power of kings, in his poetic dream, 
 Can cut no figure with the power of steam. 
 
 These long-haired themes abandoned in a lump, 
 He sings of Business "business from the jump;" 
 And in this verse we hope that you will find 
 A modest poem of the brief-haired kind. 
 
120 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Our theme is Business, and we gladly sing 
 That which the world now honors as its king; 
 Although we hear of crowns and titled gold. 
 Flour and pig iron now the scepter hold. 
 
 The time is precious, and the world s mad rush 
 Stops not for moonshine, sentiment nor gush. 
 Untimely is the minstrel who essays 
 The pomp or pride of royalty to praise. 
 
 For, at the present, man s progressive scope 
 Is due far less to royalty than soap; 
 Is due far more to workshops and to farms 
 Briarean Business with its hundred arms. 
 
 I ll tell a story of those games of old 
 Which all the nations gathered to behold; 
 Where arms and harpers struggled, and obtained 
 The laurel prizes which the victors gained; 
 
 And where the vast assemblage shouted loud 
 To praise a victor and to do him proud. 
 And I will tell you how it happened here 
 That two contesting harpers did appear. 
 
 One in his hand a golden harp he bore, 
 
 A golden fillet on his forehead wore; 
 
 And from his shoulder, with embroidered fold, 
 
 Did hang a mantle of brocaded gold. 
 
THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. 121 
 
 The other harper to the contest brings 
 An iron harp, with ripe, sonorous strings; 
 His hair was brief, and there at times did fly 
 That bilious glare of genius from his eye. 
 
 The vast assemblage standing round about 
 Received the harpers with a deafening shout, 
 And when at last the tumult died away 
 The judges motioned for the harps to play. 
 
 Gilded Chloranthus now begins his song, 
 Which jars in harsh, chaotic notes along; 
 He sings of kings, and gold. Alas! it finds 
 But little favor in the judges minds. 
 
 The audience listen, and are not exempt 
 
 From feelings both of anger and contempt. 
 
 He sings how gold, not brains, controls the earth; 
 
 How gold makes rank, and then how rank makes worth; 
 
 That kings are heaven appointed, and maintains 
 That gold can buy all bravery, and all brains. 
 Chloranthus ceased, and through the crowd there vrent 
 An uninistaken symptom of dissent. 
 
 And now, with notes sonorous, clear and sharp. 
 Begins Timesis of the iron harp. 
 He sings how iron makes a nation proud; 
 He sings how gold to iron always bowed; 
 
122 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Sings of unwalled, yet iron-guarded towns; 
 He sings of iron keels, and iron crowns; 
 How Klion s golden helmet failed to save 
 Beneath the blow of Thraxis 1 iron glaive. 
 
 He sang how Midas begged so long and much 
 The gift Jove gave him of the golden touch, 
 And how at last king Midas tried to shift 
 The consequences of the fatal gift. 
 
 And then he sang how princely G-laucus sold 
 His dingy arms for arms of solid gold; 
 How, on the field, the wounded Glaucus lay, 
 While victors bore the arms and sash av:ay; 
 
 How, in the fight, his ardent course was checked, 
 
 His golden shield unable to protect. 
 
 Thus from the iron wire the music swept; 
 
 Thus through the song the classic phantoms stepped 
 
 And ceasing said: "Of kingly power and gold 
 Too much already are the people told. " 
 And when the wire ceased trembling, long and loud 
 Came up the approbation of the crowd. 
 
 Gilded Chloranthus asks another trial, 
 And meeting from the judges no denial, 
 He starts again, but vainly he aspires 
 To tempt the music from the gilded wires. 
 
THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. 123 
 
 Than kings and gold no other song he sings; 
 No other notes will leave the golden strings; 
 And when he starts another lyric bold, 
 It breaks and runs into "the power of gold." 
 
 Then from the crowd a fitful murmur rose 
 That brought his hapless efforts to a close; 
 And when at last the crowd was silent, then 
 The iron harp and harper start again. 
 
 He sings of hardships, and he sings of arts 
 Twin themes responsive in all human hearts; 
 He sings of mariners, he sings of mines; 
 He sings of viaducts, he sings of vines; 
 
 He sings how sturdy workmen tug upon 
 
 The marble ledges of Pentelicon. 
 
 He sings of piers built out in ocean foams; 
 
 Of " woven-winged, sea-wandering sailor-homes; "* 
 
 Of daring pilots, guiding at the helm 
 Commercial tri-remes to some distant realm. 
 He sings of bridges, and he sings of roads; 
 Of Spartan manners and of iron codes; 
 
 He sings of Marathon and of Platea, 
 
 And how republics fight for an idea. 
 
 He sings the Future, and the First G-reat Cause; 
 
 The birth of morals, and the growth of laws; 
 
124: RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 How nations owe far less to soldiers drill 
 Than to the forge, and iron workers skill; 
 How private rights will slow and surely fail. 
 As labor lowers in the social scale ; 
 
 How Freedom grows ; how tyrannies decay, 
 As arts evolve, and labor gets its pay. 
 And as along Timesis poured his song, 
 A frightful frenzy seized upon the throng; 
 
 They strip the golden harper of his crown 
 And in the race course it is trampled down; 
 The golden mantle from his shoulders wrung, 
 And in the sea harper and harp are flung. 
 
 And then Timesis sang a song of old: 
 "Thus perish they who sing of kings and gold. 
 Now do not burlesque what Timesis said, 
 And, Twain-like, ask me if the man is dead. 
 
 Your blank expressions, like a billiard cue, 
 Carom me back to what I had in view 
 Which was, to soar in rash, poetic notes; 
 To sing of pigs, macadam, poultry, oats. 
 
 I would not mix at this auspicious time 
 Low, drawling verses on hydraulic lime; 
 But in Icarian flight would seek the skies 
 On carpets, coal oil, cotton, railroad ties. 
 
THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. 125 
 
 Fain would I sing of prints, of coffee A; 
 Of harness, harrows ; hoop poles, hymn books, hay. 
 Fain would I sing of rope whose twisted coil 
 Holds new washed shirts and horse thieves from the 
 soil; 
 
 Of Kansas fire brick that can stand "cremation; " 
 Of blacksmiths bellows that can stand "inflation; " 
 Of arts and artizans both great and small 
 But we must cease; our verse won t hold them all. 
 
 A long-haired bard a story once did spin; 
 I ll clip its hair, and gently lead it in. 
 It says that in Laomedon s employ 
 Old Neptune built the battlements of Troy; 
 
 And when he asked the monarch for his pay, 
 The monarch stood him back and answered, "Nay." 
 Then Neptune struck his trident on the strand, 
 And steel-clad squadrons sprang up from the sand; 
 
 He beat his trident on the ocean s banks 
 Up sprang battalions with their iron ranks. 
 The king was filled with terror and dismay; 
 He issued bonds and Neptune got his pay. 
 
 O king-crowned Business! from thy height sublime 
 Thou overlookest every land and clime. 
 Alike thou seest where thy southern sails 
 Plow up the billows and repulse the gales; 
 
126 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 As where the northern steamers from their track 
 Beat both the wild winds and the wild waves back. 
 No longer dost thou stretch thy feeble hands 
 O er inland seas, and river-bounded lands; 
 
 No longer on the ocean to and fro, 
 Borne by the breezes, do thy galleys go 
 That time is over, and thou now dost bring 
 The world to do thee homage as its king. 
 
 More potently than Neptune art thou crowned: 
 Beat down thy iron trident on the ground, * 
 And ere the echo of the blow is done 
 The brick-built cities sparkle in the sun; 
 
 Beat down thy trident where the sea surf raves, 
 And snow white navies rise amid the waves; 
 And where thy iron trident strikes the strand 
 The cities maratime in clusters stand. 
 
 But when thy energy is turned away 
 The nations crumble, and the states decay; 
 And blocks Cyclopean in the sands lie drifted 
 To show how empires fade, how realms are rifted r 
 When from their soil thy trident has been lifted. 
 
 The world is but an ocean of unrest 
 Whose tidal billows wander to the West; 
 For age on age the ancient East did hold 
 Unnumbered people and uncounted gold. 
 
THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. 127 
 
 Most happy Kansas! prosperous and free, 
 She rests upon the margin of the sea; 
 And day by day upon her shores are hurled 
 The tidal billows of the olden world. 
 
 And Business, now, with unremitting toil 
 Goes beating down his trident on the soil; 
 And, as he moves, the fields of yellow grain 
 Rise waiving on the prairie and the plain; 
 
 And scarce the soil his iron trident meets, 
 Up springs a city with a hundred streets: 
 The streets are crowded, Business gives a smile, 
 And moves on, pounding in Neptunian style. 
 
 O er Western wilds the printing press each year 
 
 Becomes a braver, bolder pioneer. 
 
 No dangers daunt it, and no toils o ertax; 
 
 It camps beside the rifle and the axe; 
 
 And while the night stars in the west decline, 
 The types are clicking on the picket line; 
 And where to-day unnumbered wild deer run, 
 To-morrow s trade, like Memnon, greets the sun. 
 
 Once Noble Prentis did a story tell 
 
 About one mule, that tumbled in a well; 
 
 And how they threw down straw, until, all right, 
 
 The mule just tramped his way up to the light. 
 
128 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 The Kansas press has had that way to do 
 
 To leave the bed-rock and to work up through. 
 
 The well is filled the times have changed since then; 
 
 O 
 
 The mule is out and can t fall back again. 
 
 The last year s wildernesses bloom to-day; 
 "Through scars to stars " the live State makes its way. 
 In such progressive times as these we guess 
 Most easily the duty of the Press. 
 
 The duty of the Press is, day by day, 
 
 To swindle old Oblivion of his prey. 
 
 It is its special duty to reveal 
 
 The frightful havoc of some foeman s steal] 
 
 Like porcupines to fling a lively quill, 
 Or hurl plumbago with destructive skill. 
 The epic bard, the minstrel with his rhymes, 
 Were once the sole historians of the times; 
 
 Barbaric night has fled before the dawn: 
 The harps lie stringless, and the bards are gone. 
 The printing press has now usurped their power 
 And clanks Clionian music hour by hour; 
 
 While from the pen the ink drops day by day 
 Are drowning kings, and washing thrones away, 
 The local Press should sedulously strive 
 To build up business and to make it live. 
 
THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. 129 
 
 Business is what the people want to hear; 
 The Press should echo it from far and near. 
 No town can hope prosperity and trade, 
 Unless the Press shall vigorously aid. 
 
 The local Press must utter loud and long 
 Commercial lyrics in unceasing song; 
 Must sing, in notes sonorous, clear and sharp, 
 Songs that re-echo like Timesis harp. 
 
 But if the Press, in irresponsive strains, 
 Shall fail to sing of business and of brains; 
 Shall leave the people and the people s toil; 
 Shall rise above the workshop and the soil; 
 
 And if the people shall at last behold 
 
 A Press responsive to the power of gold, 
 
 A change will come; and then the Press will be 
 
 Thrown, like the gilded harper in the sea. 
 
 With such high duties honored, we may guess 
 What is the future mission of the Press. 
 Tis theirs to be, as in some clock tower high, 
 Seeing and seen by all both far and nigh; 
 
 Tis theirs to be the dial of the times, 
 And mark the progress of all lands and climes. 
 As useful arts come struggling up through trial, 
 The Press records them on its iron dial; 
 
130 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 And as its iron fingers slowly mark 
 The forward movement on the iron arc, 
 The world looks up with fervor from below, 
 Watching the iron minutes come and go. 
 
 What Kansas wants is pioneers, not partisans; 
 Wants poorer orators but better artisans. 
 The politicians have become redundant, 
 The moribund ones should be mori-bundant. 
 
 We ve gathered here from places far away; 
 Have brought our knitting and intend to stay; 
 And all of us the greater part at least 
 Like ancient wise men, came here from the East. 
 
 We do not live so elegant and well 
 As we ve been "used to" if you heard us tell 
 For some of us in marble halls lived grand; 
 And now our only hauls are, hauling sand. 
 
 And those who nations destinies might sway, 
 Are out here breaking prairie by the day. 
 Men who have led brigades with bugle sounding 
 Are here police, nomadic pigs impounding. 
 
 Men for whom senates would suspend their rules 
 Are using oratory, here, to mules; 
 And he who watered Eastern stock completes 
 His education, here, in watering streets. 
 
THE SHORT-HAIRED POET. 131 
 
 But over this we must not feel depressed 
 We re building up the empire of the West. 
 We have our ills, but these will soon be passed; 
 Sorrows, like boots, aren t always on the last. 
 
 These trifling troubles soon will shrink away 
 Like dew, and gamblers, at the break of day. 
 Those honored names we gladly would applaud 
 Who visit us this evening from abroad, 
 
 Although not well acquainted, we meanwhile 
 Have read your papers and we like your style. 
 We do not let your efforts go to waste; 
 We have applauded with the shears and paste; 
 
 And, speaking metaphorically, thus 
 
 We stuck to you, and hope you will to us. 
 
132 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 A ROMANCE. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 When a person knows a story that he thinks he ought 
 
 to tell, 
 If he doesn t get to tell it, why of course he don t feel 
 
 well ; 
 And if no one stops to listen, why of course a man 
 
 will feel 
 
 All broke up and dislocated, and uneasy as an eel ; 
 That s the reason that I ask you, in a sad, imploring 
 
 way : 
 
 Here s a little, bob-tailed gushlet, I will tell it if you 
 stay. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Well ! the heroes of my story are a maiden and a youth ; 
 Sam was raised in Indiana, and the girl lived in Duluth. 
 Where my subjects met each other, I presume I can t 
 
 relate 
 I am told it was Wisconsin, and suppose that is the 
 
 State ; 
 
 Sam was storing ardent spirits, and engaged in ped 
 dling stencils, 
 
 W T hile the girl was mangling hash with some old hotel 
 utensils ; 
 
 And they met and loved each other, in that rash, 
 erratic way 
 
 That is told of in the novel, or is acted in the play. 
 
A ROMANCE. 133 
 
 How a man can go distracted on a female, as her lover, 
 Is a mystery to me that I never could discover ; 
 And I wish I could discover why a woman likes a man 
 With such horrible devotion, but I don t believe I can. 
 
 On the shores of Yellow Paint, 
 
 After winter, cold and chill, 
 When the spring-time strikes its focus, 
 By what magic hocus-pocus 
 Come the primrose and the crocus, 
 
 On the meadow and the hill ? 
 Whyfore buds the hamamellis ? 
 Whyfore twining up the trellis ? 
 Whyfore, from the painted lattice, 
 Does the columbine peep at us ? 
 
 If you ll answer this, I ll fill 
 You with ardent spirits gratis. 
 
 In this world of mirth and music, pork, pomposity and 
 
 pain, 
 
 There is absolutely nothing human beings can explain. 
 Here I leave the realms of reason, disappointed as I 
 
 am, 
 And return unto my subject, the Wisconsin girl and 
 
 Sam. 
 
 Oh, the way they loved each other, it is vain to try to 
 
 tell- 
 Why ! they sickened all the boarders of a second-class 
 
 hotel ; 
 
134: RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 This, of course, used up the landlord, who collapsed for 
 
 want of custom 
 He ran off and left the merchants he was owing, and 
 
 it bust em ; 
 Then the heavy business fortunes went a-tumbling into 
 
 wrecks 
 And the banks began suspending and a-certifying 
 
 checks. 
 
 Oh, such frantic, furious loving, rabid, restless, reck- 
 less, rash ! 
 
 No! the people couldn t stand it, and the city went to 
 smash ; 
 
 All the citizens protested, and the subjects of our stan 
 zas 
 
 Fished their trunks out of the window, and en-routed 
 it for Kansas. 
 
 (Pyrotechnic exhibitions of affection ought to grieve 
 But they] ye made the world a circus ever since the 
 
 ,days\of Eve. 
 Should you call these words ironic, you will make a big 
 
 mistake, 
 
 For ferruginous remarks are just the kind I never 
 . make. ) 
 
 At this point I end my story; by the way that you re- 
 
 ,,1 ceive it, 
 
 And the honest way I tell it, I believe that you be 
 lieve it. 
 
A ROMANCE. 135 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 On the shores of Yellow Paint, where the billows loudly 
 roar, 
 
 Where the blue-eyed zephyrs faint, and the blue-eyed 
 women snore, 
 
 On a bluff beside the billows on a bold, projecting 
 bluff - 
 
 Stands a large and stately building, that is made of 
 native stuff; 
 
 And around it are the meadows, and the orchards and 
 the fields; 
 
 High-priced cattle lowing gently, while the modest 
 Berkshire squeals; 
 
 And around it leaves of Autumn promenade with reck 
 less rustle, 
 
 And around it Kansas zephyrs play with customary 
 muscle. 
 
 Do you ask me who resides here I must say, in tear 
 ful tones, 
 
 That said building is infested by a bachelor called 
 Jones. 
 
 On the shores of Yellow Paint, where the billows sadly 
 
 rave, 
 Where unhappy zephyrs plaint o er the graveyard and 
 
 the grave, 
 
 Where the cypress and the yew let the struggling sun 
 beams through, 
 
 And the marble bids adieu to the beautiful and brave, 
 Stands a splendid mausoleum, and the interesting annals 
 Of the owner are presented in extenso on the panels; 
 
136 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 And the tomb is minaretted with a white Carrara shaft, 
 That is longer than the oar-pole of a Mississippi raft. 
 
 Should you ask me what proud being underneath this 
 marble lies, 
 
 Should you ask whose loving fingers caused these sou 
 venirs to rise, 
 
 Should you ask me whose loud virtues on the marble 
 are set down 
 
 Having given a perusal, I should say his name was 
 Brown. 
 
 Brown, you see, was very wealthy, and they built this 
 
 to attract 
 The attention of the bugler, when the final doom was 
 
 cracked. 
 On the massive marble panels there are finely written 
 
 down 
 
 Many schedules of the virtues and nobilities of Brown 
 Many virtues great and rare; but I cannot help from 
 
 feeling 
 They omitted Brown s best virtue legal, lawful, thrifty 
 
 stealing. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Now I think I hear you tell me, in the most emphatic 
 
 tones, 
 
 Tell your story blast your Paint Creek ! we don t 
 care for Brown or Jones. " 
 
A ROMANCE. 137 
 
 I decline to be chopped off, sir; and besides, this slight 
 
 digression 
 Has been told by way of kindness, to correct a false 
 
 impression. 
 It might happen in the future that you d visit Yellow 
 
 Paint, 
 Where the billows wildly roar, where the saucy sea 
 
 gulls soar, 
 And the women loudly snore, whether they re asleep 
 
 or ain t; 
 And beholding Jones - lay-out," you would instantly 
 
 declare 
 My romantic hoop-pole lover was a-living over there. 
 
 Then you d pass along in silence, and your heart grow 
 cold and sad, 
 
 And you d take a dose of "ruin," if the fluid could be 
 had; 
 
 And you d talk of deathless loving, and devotion deep 
 and true; 
 
 All at once you d see Brown s marble, mid the cypress 
 and the yew 
 
 Tomb of him o er whose bright virtues an inscription 
 sadly grieves, 
 
 While the column flings its outline through the mesh- 
 work of the leaves; 
 
 And you d say, "See there! that column: it must cer 
 tainly belong 
 
 To the wild Wisconsin maiden she who loved so deep 
 and strong; " 
 10 
 
138 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 And you d go and tell the story to the first one you 
 
 would see 
 Tell how wildly strong their love was; tell how Samuel 
 
 and she 
 
 Produced a first-class panic and demoralized a town. 
 You d say, "There sleeps her potash" you d turn 
 
 and point to Brown. 
 
 But you wouldn t be correct, for some long-haired,, 
 frontier mammoth 
 
 Wed the girl and started westward, and they re living 
 
 out at Klamath. 
 Four large boys get daily flouncings from the tough, 
 
 maternal withe, 
 And a woman runs that outfit, by the novel name of 
 
 Smith. 
 
 Sam is keeping a saloon up in Canada, Toronto, 
 
 And he drinks his ardent spirits, just like you do, when 
 
 you want to; 
 Naught he careth for the maiden, whether she s extant 
 
 or not, 
 For she long has been forgotten, just as Sam has been 
 
 forgot. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 From the shores of Yellow Paint, 
 
 Where the billows loudly roar, 
 
 From that adamantine shore, 
 Where the blue-eyed zephyrs faint, 
 
 And the women loudly snore, 
 Whether they re asleep or ain t, 
 
 Comes the burden of my song. 
 
A ROMANCE. 139 
 
 When you love a girl, you ourght 
 Not to make it sweet and short 
 
 Love her light, but love her long. 
 
 If you love her wild and strong, 
 You will soon be better taught 
 She will leave you without thought. 
 Should you have a maiden s love 
 
 Love her light, but love her long. 
 
 I m opposed to moralizing, in a solemn spot like this, 
 But in fact man ain t constructed for a heavy strain of 
 
 bliss. 
 Human beings are like boilers, and the same rules, it 
 
 would seem, 
 
 Have an equal application to affection and to steam. 
 Making love and putting steam on will entail the same 
 
 mishaps 
 When you get on too much pressure, all is lost by a 
 
 collapse. 
 
 Now, I think I hear you ask me, in the most imploring 
 
 tones, 
 "Do us full poetic justice tell us, what became of 
 
 Jones?" 
 On the shores of Yellow Paint, break the angry billows 
 
 still; 
 Still the marble column gleams, and the angry white 
 
 gull screams, 
 While the habitat of Jones still is seen upon the hill; 
 
140 RHYMES OF IB ON QUILL. 
 
 There the able-bodied zephyrs, with their melancholy 
 
 moans, 
 Rock my native-lumber shanty I M the bachelor 
 
 called JONES. 
 
 A CORN POEM. 
 
 [Delivered at Kansas Celebration, Centennial 4th of July, 1876. J 
 
 Our President and Governor have said. 
 In proclamations that you all have read. 
 That we the record of the hundred years. 
 Its hopes, its histories, its pioneers, 
 Should hear in public; wishing to obey, 
 We meet together on the present day. 
 
 As local annals and such themes as those 
 Are more attractive when addressed in prose. 
 And as the dense statistics of the times 
 Are somewhat irreducible to rhymes. 
 We leave those subjects to their proper charge. 
 And take the liberty to ro am at large. 
 There have been men who into verse complete 
 Could rhyme a township map or tax receipt; 
 But no such man is here. Ourself to-day 
 Must treat of subjects in a general way. 
 While present prices rule on steers and grain, 
 Divine, first-class emotion can t sustain. 
 At such low figures, any Kansas muse 
 All pyrotechnic efforts must refuse; 
 
A CORN POEM. 
 
 Dates, names, statistics, and such themes as those 
 Must go remanded to the realms of prose; 
 So here a humble poem we commence, 
 Equivalent to corn at twenty cents. 
 
 Nate Price, of Troy, at Leavenworth last June, 
 
 Told of a backwoods Arkansaw saloon: 
 
 Two gay -commercial tourists," somewhat dry, 
 
 Stepped in for drinks as they were passing by. 
 
 Says one: "Some lemon in my tumbler squeeze." 
 
 The other says: Some sugar, if you please." 
 
 Each got a pistol pointed at his head 
 
 You ll take her straight," the bar-keep gravely said. 
 
 The gay commercial tourists bowed to fate, 
 
 And took their drinks and exits somewhat straight. 
 
 The humble poem that we here begin 
 
 Has got no lemon and no sugar in. 
 
 It s as it is, and we beg leave to state, 
 
 On this - auspicious day" you ll take it straight. 
 
 My theme to-day is History not the shelf 
 Whereon she sets her idols, but herself. 
 
 If I examine history aright, 
 I read of one long and unbroken fight 
 One long, thrill drama; every scene and act 
 Contains the record of a city sacked. 
 From time to time the curtain drops amain 
 On cities blazing, with defenders slain; 
 
142 RHYMES OF IKONQUILL. 
 
 Yet, ere their ashes have had time to cool, 
 They start again to opulence and rule. 
 To what strange power, so vitalized and strong, 
 Do these recurrent energies belong ? 
 Whence come the latent forces that re-rear, 
 From ash and wave, the palace and the pier? 
 
 No answer back the old historian brings; 
 
 His is a tale of battles and of kings. 
 
 His prose and verse were written to proclaim 
 
 Some useless battle, or some kingly name 
 
 No honor granted to the brains or toil 
 
 That pluck the wealth from mountain-, sea and soil. 
 
 They leave that out but throw distinguished light 
 
 Upon the least minutiae of a fight. 
 
 They name the leaders, and each word they said; 
 
 The hour, the spot, some phalanx charged, or fled; 
 
 The time and place some squadron came in view, 
 
 And what it did, or what it failed to do; 
 
 And then because some something was not done, 
 
 This king, or that, is whipped and has to run. 
 
 Then come three cheers for the successful king, 
 
 And bugles peel like slippery elms in spring. 
 
 Since Cecrops landed on the Grecian shore, 
 Brought on a stock started a country store 
 Picked out a site by some prophetic guess, 
 And boomed old Athens to a grand success, 
 The human mind has always sought renown 
 In founding states, or building up a town. 
 Full four and thirty centuries have passed 
 Since enterprising Cecrops breathed his last, 
 
A CORN POEM. 143 
 
 And many cities since that early day 
 
 Have grown up grandly, and have passed away; 
 
 Yet ancient chroniclers forget to state 
 
 What built the cities, and what made them great. 
 
 Of those of whom the olden stories sing, 
 
 The greatest hero is the unknown king. 
 
 Of him of whom old history gives no clew 
 
 This unknown king declare I unto you. 
 
 "Who framed the social structure? paid the bill? 
 
 Who organized its labor and its skill? 
 
 Who built the ships and wharfs? Who wove the sail? 
 
 Who fed their armies? and who forged their mail? 
 
 No answer ancient history gives back. 
 
 These unknown kings no wealthy cities sack; 
 
 And history, with proud, patrician frown, 
 
 Ignores a power that never burned a town. 
 
 Read of the growth of states, and you will find 
 
 Their opulence to some great king assigned; 
 
 And being king, by accident or force, 
 
 He gets the credit, as a thing of course. 
 
 Now, when the truth is told, it shows two things: 
 
 First, states are rich and great in spite of kings; 
 
 And next, that nations opulent are made 
 
 By neither kings nor battles, but by trade. 
 
 Old Business is the monarch. He rules both 
 The opulence of nations and their growth. 
 Him that we call endearingly Old Biz" 
 He does the work; the credit all is his. 
 
144 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 He builds their cities and he paves their streets, 
 He feeds their armies and equips their fleets. 
 Kings are his puppets, and his arm alone 
 Contains the muscle that can prop a throne; 
 Soon would the gilded fabric tumble down 
 Were Business not the regent of the crown. 
 
 Old History, stand up! We wish to ask 
 
 Why you so meanly have performed your task. 
 
 Under your arm you have a showy book, 
 
 In which we now insist that we may look; 
 
 Would like to see what s in that gilt-edged tome. 
 
 Say, did Old Business ever reign in Rome? 
 
 You say he didn t? Well, may we inquire 
 
 If the aforesaid Business reigned at Tyre? 
 
 "Don t b lieve he did? " Well, look the index through 
 
 And see if he is mentioned once by you. 
 
 "Can t find his name? " Well, that is somewhat queer. 
 
 Say, of Old Business did you ever hear? 
 
 You never did? Well, I m inclined to think 
 
 Pens full of pigs, and not pens full of ink, 
 
 Should be the object of your future skill, 
 
 And that your book should feed the paper mill. 
 
 Oh, History! the language may be broad, 
 
 But we must here impeach thee as a fraud. 
 
 There is a cheerful story that is told 
 
 About a great Egyptian king of old; 
 
 He thought to build a lighthouse on an isle 
 
 That fronted on the delta of the Nile. 
 
 He thought to take the money of the state, 
 
 Build something big, and be forever great. 
 
A CORN POEM. 145 
 
 He called for architects, selected one, 
 
 And turned him over treasure by the ton. 
 
 On that flat isle, o er which the breakers curled, 
 
 Rose up the second wonder of the world; 
 
 Far o er the land and distant ocean viewn, 
 
 Five hundred feet in snow white marble hewn; 
 
 And on its summit, watch fires, day and night, 
 
 Directed shipping with a constant light 
 
 The tower of Pharos, capped with massive ledge, 
 
 Bearing the monarch s name upon the edge, 
 
 And o er the sea for many a league marine 
 
 The royal name of Ptolemy was seen. 
 
 The architect, unhonored and unknown, 
 
 Died, leaving all the credit to the throne; 
 
 The man whose splendid genius planned and wrought 
 
 Was not considered worthy of a thought. 
 
 Then died the king, and people one by one 
 
 Spoke of the tower as something he had done. 
 
 There stands the lighthouse, but each new decade 
 
 Beholds the king s inscription slowly fade. 
 
 It dimmer grows, until it fades from sight, 
 
 And then a new inscription comes to light; 
 
 The architect asserts his rightful claim 
 
 Where stood the king s, now stands the builder s name. 
 
 The king s name, wrought in stucco work and paint, 
 
 Each year beheld grow dimmer and more faint; 
 
 Filled with cement, this sentence had been hid: 
 
 " For mariners, by Sos-tra-tos, ofCnid. " 
 
146 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 The rugged letters, carved in massive Greek, 
 The builder and his residence bespeak, 
 While in the dust, upon the sea and shore, 
 The kingly name goes scattered evermore. 
 
 Great states, whose splendid ruins scattered lie, 
 
 Have stood like wonders in the days gone by; 
 
 And every state, before it met decay, 
 
 Has ruled the world on some eventful day 
 
 Has taken rule by virtue of its sons. 
 
 Through every state the thread of empire runs; 
 
 The ancient nations and the ancient creeds 
 
 Are strung on empire like a row of beads; 
 
 And on the ruins that in silence sleep, 
 
 The name of Business has been graven deep. 
 
 And he has made them be what they have been; 
 
 Has made them win because they needs must win. 
 
 And he the architect, who planned and wrought, 
 
 Building no better than he knew and thought 
 
 And over all, in stucco work and paint, 
 
 The names of kings are feebly seen and faint. 
 
 The now aggressive spirit of the age 
 Adds to old History an unwritten page. 
 Chip off the paint and plaster, and anew 
 Restore the name of Business to our view. 
 
 Vain were an effort, in this modern age, 
 To tell when Business came upon the stage; 
 First when and where he hung his shingle out, 
 Is, like a jury trial, full of doubt. 
 
A CORN POEM. 147 
 
 The first important European town, 
 
 In point of time and subsequent renown, 
 
 Was Athens; and when founded, facts attest 
 
 That nerve and business then were tending west. 
 
 If, for a point of time to fix upon, 
 
 We take the era of King Solomon, 
 
 We find that restless movement of the race 
 
 Toward the western world is taking place; 
 
 The emigration has become so vast, 
 
 With buccaneers the seas are swarming fast; 
 
 Athens grows large, and public spirit calls 
 
 For graded streets and more extensive walls; 
 
 Then Greece fills up, until the moving host 
 
 Is banked upon the Adriatic coast. 
 
 The sea but for a moment stops the tide: 
 
 Brundusium springs from the Italian side. 
 
 Then west by north, in undiminished size, 
 
 The volume of the emigration plies; 
 
 Back o er the line, to deep Brundusium s bay, 
 
 Rome builds and paves the world-wide Appian way. 
 
 Checked by the western sea, the restless tide 
 
 Builds up a chain of cities, side by side. 
 
 Then, seeking vent on scarce divergent lines, 
 
 Boils through the foot hills of the Apennines, 
 
 Builds Florence, Milan, Genoa, Turin, 
 
 Halts at the Alps, but halts to re-begin; 
 
 Then, like a pent-up torrent, the advance 
 
 Pours through the Alps and floods the plains of France. 
 
 The path of empire follows in its train; 
 
 The western world it gives to Charlemagne. 
 
148 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Still on it goes, the straits of Dover crossed, 
 England opposes, but her cause is lost; 
 The island fills, no land is left; then she 
 Starts out to grasp the empires of the sea. 
 
 Who planned this movement? Who impelled the tide? 
 Kings tried to stop it, but as vainly tried. 
 How quickly is the frail conundrum guessed: 
 It was Old Business he was going west. 
 
 This bright New World its wonderful career, 
 Is too well known to be examined here; 
 Its hopes, its progress, rapid and diverse, 
 Need greater inspiration to rehearse. 
 To-day we turn the hour glass, and anew 
 The sands of a fresh century start through. 
 
 On July Fourth we always float the flag 
 And push the old bald eagle from the crag; 
 Fly him the length and breadth of this fair land, 
 From the Penobscot to the Rio Grande; 
 Then without rest we quickly start him on 
 A trip from Florida to Oregon; 
 Then bring him back, and boost him to the sky, 
 And let him stay there till the next July. 
 
 Oh, grand old bird! o er many a weary mile 
 They ve made you sail in oratoric style, 
 While fledgling speakers, in refulgent prose, 
 Capped many a gorgeous climax as you rose. 
 
A CORN POEM. 149 
 
 To-day our choicest colors are unfurled, 
 Soar up, proud bird, and circle round the world. 
 And we predict that nowhere will you find 
 A place like Kansas that you left behind. 
 He who has lived in Kansas, though he roam, 
 Can find no other spot and call it "Home." 
 
 As Ingalls says, a Kansas man may stray 
 
 May leave perchance depart, or go away 
 
 In short may roam, but, be it anywhere, 
 
 He must return, if he can raise the fare. 
 
 No other State those wants so well subserve 
 
 Of enterprise, of energy, of nerve; 
 
 No other State more thoroughly maintains 
 
 A deep, firm hold on enterprise and brains; 
 
 No other State has held a greater power 
 
 To meet the harsh requirements of the hour. 
 
 Though border war her cities overrun, 
 
 Though swarms of locusts shade the summer sun, 
 
 No matter what misfortunes may occur, 
 
 The State goes on as if they never were. 
 
 Cities arise where towns were burned before. 
 
 The prairies sparkle with the church and store, 
 
 And painted harvesters, fleet after fleet, 
 
 Like yachts, career through seas of waving wheat. 
 
 We all believe in Kansas; she s our State, 
 
 With all the elements to make her great 
 
 Young men, high hopes, proud dreams tis ours to see 
 
 The State succeed to what the State should be. 
 
150 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 And when a hundred years have drifted by, 
 When comes the next Centennial July, 
 When other orators, in other verse, 
 Far better days in better ways rehearse, 
 When other crowds, composed of other men, 
 Shall re-enact the present scene again, 
 May they be able then to say that she 
 Is all that we have wished the State to be. 
 
 THE MEDICINE MAN. 
 
 A STORY OF A KANSAS PIONEER. 
 
 Stories often teem with sadness this is desolate and 
 
 grim: 
 
 It is of a Kansas doctor, and the way we treated him; 
 And the object of these verses is an eloquent appeal 
 To those higher, nobler feelings that, of course, you 
 
 know, you feel. 
 
 Any man who hears this story is obliged to shed a tear; 
 When I read it to the editor that runs the Pioneer 
 Hopeless melancholy took him in, and for a week or 
 
 more 
 He was wading round in gum boots through the tears 
 
 upon the floor. 
 
 Out to Kansas came a doctor, wide awake and full of 
 pluck; 
 
 Up in Atchison he settled, and he leaned up close to 
 luck. 
 
THE MEDICINE MAN. 151 
 
 There he hung out his diploma, and he stayed from 
 
 spring to fall, 
 But he never saw an invalid, and never got a call. 
 
 Colonel Martin then advised him that more practice 
 
 could be got 
 
 If he only shipped his talent to suburban Wyandotte. 
 Up in Wyandotte he lingered just about a year in all, 
 And he talked about his college, but he never reached 
 
 a call. 
 
 Buchan said: "Raid Topeka;" but Taylor calmly said: 
 " Try Lea venworth or Lawrence, hwich are better, in 
 
 their stead. " 
 
 Lawrence, Leavenworth, Topeka yielded similar results, 
 And he felt much disappointment, but he didn t feel 
 
 much pulse. 
 One sad day he met with Murdock, who observed: 
 
 "Come down below; 
 Try the Nile of sunny Kansas;" and the doctor said 
 
 he d go. 
 First he cashed a fat ancestral draft; then, plunging in 
 
 the dark, 
 Gave to fortune and to Murdock the direction of his 
 
 bark. 
 
 Down at Wichita he anchored, but his chance was just 
 
 as slim; 
 
 His bark was all Peruvian they had no need of him. 
 Shortly after he had opened out in busy Wichita, 
 He absorbed by merest accident the rudiments of 
 
 "draw." 
 
152 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 His office stayed unopened for a few eventful days; 
 He diagnosed that noble game in all its wondrous ways. 
 One eve he found a bob-tailed flush of most important 
 
 size; 
 He stayed behind it, and became a pauper in disguise. 
 
 Then said he: "This bleeding Kansas is no place for 
 me to dwell, 
 
 One lone call in three years and a half, and the man 
 that called was well." 
 
 Then a very lonesome shirt or two into his trunk he 
 stored, 
 
 And he left his watch in mortmain with his landlord 
 for his board; 
 
 And he straightened up, disgusted, and relieved his 
 burdened mind 
 
 With opinions of the country he was now to leave be 
 hind. 
 
 tl There is something to this country that I do not 
 understand; 
 
 Working, scheming, trade and business, lively lawsuits, 
 labor, land. 
 
 There is not that noble yearning here for pills and cul 
 tured thought: 
 
 All my classic erudition is both useless and unsought; 
 
 And the people, as I find them, are as ignorant as 
 geese 
 
 Of the woes of Asia Minor and the Iliad of Greece. 
 
THE MEDICINE MAN. 153 
 
 No one stops to read my sheepskin that has hung 
 
 from week to week; 
 No one ever mentions Ajax, no one ever mentions 
 
 Greek. 
 People suffer in abundance from the most unheard-of 
 
 health, 
 And they keep acquiring lawsuits and accumulating 
 
 wealth. 
 Day by day a man keeps working, just as happy as a 
 
 clam, 
 If he only has the cash to buy a lawsuit and a ham. 
 
 Only yesterday I saw a man I thought would surely 
 
 die; 
 He had got a compound, comminuted fracture of the 
 
 thigh. 
 Aching but a half an hour or so, the leg declined to 
 
 swell, 
 He poured cold water on it, and the next day it was 
 
 well. 
 Then he worked six hours that afternoon, and, ere the 
 
 sun went down, 
 He got into a lawsuit with the fattest man in town. 
 
 "Now and here I pack my little trunk. By vum! I 
 
 wouldn t stay 
 In climates where a man gets old, dries up, and blows 
 
 away; 
 Wouldn t live in a community where fortunes every 
 
 week 
 
 Can be made by men without the slightest rudiments 
 of Greek. 
 
154 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Let me let me find some sickly, classic, sentimental 
 
 spot. 
 Here, sir! check my baggage eastward, via Paint Creek 
 
 and Fort Scott." 
 
 Then he wiped the perspiration from his high and noble 
 
 brow, 
 
 And he filed some affidavits that I don t remember now. 
 Shortly after this, a mule train, from the westward 
 
 coming slow, 
 Camped beside the raging Paint Creek, with the doctor 
 
 on the go. 
 An old army mule that evening, after supper, just for 
 
 fun, 
 Kicked and broke the doctor s arms and legs, and all 
 
 his ribs but one. 
 
 This old mule would make a hero for a romance or a 
 song; 
 
 When the drums beat, and the .bugles sounded battle 
 loud and long, 
 
 He enlisted in the army, and he helped to pull a train, 
 
 Up the mountains, down the valleys, through the sun 
 shine and the rain; 
 
 And right well he served his country, for he knew 
 where duty lay; 
 
 He could live for weeks on end-gates, when they couldn t 
 give him hay. 
 
THE MEDICINE MAN. 155 
 
 No complaining, no desertion; through the gumbo to 
 
 the hub, 
 Week by week our long-eared hero jerked a wagon 
 
 load of grub. 
 Lightning struck him, cannon shot him, but he never 
 
 failed nor flunked; 
 Danger left him as it found him undiscouraged, un- 
 
 defunct, 
 
 And in all my army service I have never seen a mule 
 With a keener comprehension of the educated fool. 
 He would spot a man instanter, if he overheard him 
 
 speak 
 About Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Correlation, Force or 
 
 Greek. 
 He would work and watch in silence, and look sheepish 
 
 day by day, 
 One eye closed in meditation, till that man got in his 
 
 way; 
 Then that person s friends were lucky if they did not 
 
 have to make 
 A collection of their comrade with a basket and a rake. 
 
 Three long days and nights the doctor in my shanty 
 
 did remain; 
 Oftentimes he d grow despondent, and have symptoms 
 
 of a pain; 
 Oftentimes he d seem discouraged, and would say in 
 
 accents weak: 
 "Oh! condemn a State where folks get rich without a 
 
 word of Greek. " 
 
156 RHYME 8 OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Then his language would get flighty from the pressur< 
 
 of his ills, 
 Mixing Latin, Greek and Ajax up with three jacks 
 
 checks and pills. 
 But I knew he would recover, or, at least, I thought \ 
 
 knew 
 That the ozone in the climate was dead sure to brin^ 
 
 him through. 
 On the fifth day, convalescent, rose this damaged gues 
 
 of mine, 
 And upon the sixth, all right, but sad, he crossed th< 
 
 Kansas line. 
 Left behind him in his exit were ambition, hope anc 
 
 spunk; 
 Kansas retained his enmity Paint Creek retained his 
 
 trunk. 
 
 Now a true poetic justice very rigidly asserts 
 
 That I ought to add a sequel to our hero and his shirts: 
 
 And a thorough comprehension of the reason of th( 
 
 rule, 
 Says the sequel might embody something further of th< 
 
 mule. 
 
 Well, our hapless, trunkless hero has regained his native 
 
 State; 
 He s aesthetic; he s got wisdom, and is honored bu1 
 
 sedate. 
 He has found congenial country, rich and sickly, so tc 
 
 speak, 
 Where the people live on coupons, and like medicine and 
 
 Greek; 
 
THE MEDICINE MAN. 157 
 
 And a very pleasant stipend he is able now to draw 
 
 From the active perspiration of his large and manly 
 jaw. 
 
 He has gotten out a volume, which a leading paper said 
 
 Showed a vast amount of learning, and a very level 
 head; 
 
 And he lectures to the students in the colleges near by; 
 
 And he tells about ambition how a man should do or 
 die; 
 
 Talks of allegoric eagles flying upward to the sun; 
 
 Tells them all about success in life, and how the thing 
 is done. 
 
 And he lectures those poor students all about the roll 
 of fame 
 
 How a man should take a broad-axe, as it were, and 
 hew a name; 
 
 Talks of noble, high endeavor, and refers in strains 
 sublime 
 
 To those antiquated footsteps left upon those sands of 
 time. 
 
 These same lectures have been printed they re the 
 best I ever saw; 
 
 But they do not mention Kansas, and they don t refer 
 to "draw." 
 
 Now, my heart would swell with pathos, and my lan 
 guage fill with gush, 
 
 Just to think what nerve it takes to stay behind a bob 
 tail flush; 
 
158 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 But, of course, it isn t business for a lecturer to speak 
 Of such subjects to a people who are so diseased with 
 
 Greek. 
 But if they will send these students to the shore of 
 
 Yellow Paint 
 To that boulder-drifted shore, where the angry billows 
 
 roar, 
 And the women loudly snore, whether they re asleep or 
 
 ain t 
 I could tell them in my lecture that there seems to be 
 
 a law 
 That applies as well to greatness, as we know it does 
 
 to "draw. " 
 If you have some pairs to draw to, and have only got 
 
 the sand, 
 
 You may make the world a pauper on the first or sec 
 ond hand. 
 If you have no pair to draw to, you must "ante" and 
 
 must wait: 
 
 You are likely to be gobbled, but riot likely to be great. 
 Fame is something like the waiter that went roaring 
 
 down the hall, 
 Giving neither bread nor greatness to the man with 
 
 one fish-ball. 
 
 When the summer moon is beaming on the prairie and 
 
 the stream, 
 When my silver-lighted shanty seems the palace of a 
 
 dream. 
 
THE MEDICINE MAN. 159 
 
 Then I sit out on my wood pile, and I ponder very fast 
 
 O er the somewhat funny present, and the much more 
 funny past; 
 
 Think of things that might have happened things for 
 gotten long ago 
 
 How the past had changed the present had it hap 
 pened so and so. 
 
 Then I think about the future, and the turn that things 
 may take; 
 
 And I say: Hopes are but dreamings of a person wide 
 awake; 
 
 Then I add: Good bye, old Mundane, as to couch and 
 dreams I go, 
 
 I m the bachelor of Paint Creek, and my name is 
 
 JOSEPH JOE. 
 
160 RHYMES OF 1RONQUILL. 
 
 AESOP S FABLES. 
 
 The falsehoods of the immortal ^Esop bear such an 
 appearance of innocence and truth that, as examples, 
 they have been handed down from antiquity, undimmed 
 by suspicion, and unshaken by criticism. 
 
 To the young and rising youth, whom tender years 
 for future efforts are shaping, who are yet to go to the 
 legislature, to edit newspapers, run for office, and hold 
 positions of perquisites and emoluments more espe 
 cially those who are to be the sole hope for candidates 
 in the future a study of ^Esop s successful efforts are 
 invaluable. Having had to gain experience from con 
 versations with candidates, campaign speeches and tele 
 grams, the translator can imagine how gladly HE would 
 have hailed these models of successful ability, in former 
 years. 
 
 The mis-statements and mendacity of ^Esop have never 
 been surpassed; as such they are here translated for the 
 scholars of the Paint Creek school, and thrown like 
 bread upon the angry billows of the Yellow Paint. 
 TRANSLATOR. 
 
ZEPHYR ET CANINE. 161 
 
 ZEPHYR ET CANINE. 
 
 Once a Kansas zephyr strayed 
 Where a brass-eyed bird pup played, 
 And that foolish canine bayed 
 
 At that zephyr, in a gay, 
 
 Semi-idiotic way. 
 Then that zephyr, in about 
 Half a jiffy, took that pup, 
 Tipped him over wrong side up, 
 Then it turned him wrong side out. 
 
 And it calmly journeyed thence, 
 With a barn and string of fence. 
 
 H^EC FABULA. 
 
 When communities turn loose 
 Social forces that produce 
 
 The disorders of a gale, 
 Act upon the well-known law: 
 Face the breeze, but close your jaw. 
 
 It s a rule that will riot fail: 
 If you bay it, in a gay, 
 Self-sufficient sort of way, 
 
 It will land you, without doubt, 
 Upside down and wrong side out. 
 
162 RHYMES OF IRQJVQUILL. 
 
 ANGUIS ET ANGUISH. 
 
 Old man Snyder found a snake, 
 Frozen stiffer than a stake, 
 
 And he tucked it in his breast, 
 And he buttoned up his vest. 
 When the saurian became thawed, 
 Mr. Snyder became chawed, 
 
 And in one unbroken stream 
 He proceeded to blaspheme, 
 And eradicate the plug 
 From a little, old brown jug. 
 
 Then he took a modest "snort," 
 Of, perhaps, about a quart, 
 
 And conversed as if he well 
 
 Had profanity to sell. 
 Year by year, with all his might, 
 
 Snyder tried to cure that bite; 
 But he didn t have the heft; 
 
 So one day, beside the jug, 
 
 He, while heaving at the plug, 
 Caught the jim-james and got left. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Any man that is astute, sir, 
 Keeps his reptiles in his boots, sir; 
 
 But its thinner than a wafer, 
 Yes, sir, bitterer than borax, 
 To be gnawed about the thorax, 
 
 One s humanity to pay for. 
 
THE AXE-I-DENT. 103 
 
 THE AXE-I-DENT. 
 
 Day by day was Thomas seen 
 
 On the head of Wolverine, 
 
 And the old primeval rung 
 As his five-pound axe he slung; 
 
 And he worked with smile and song, 
 
 Making "wood-cuts" all day long. 
 
 But the wood grew hard to chip, 
 So he went to grind his axe; 
 But his care becoming lax, 
 
 Something run afoul the crank, 
 
 And it gave the axe a yank, 
 
 And the helve it gave a flip, 
 
 And it reached him on the lip; 
 Then the unreflecting youth 
 Nimbly gulped a first-class tooth. 
 
 To the doctor Thomas goes, 
 And discourses all his woes, 
 
 Worldly, physical and mental; 
 But the doctor shook his head, 
 And he very gravely said: 
 You have got a fell disease, 
 For in axe-i-dents like these 
 
 Pains are always inside-dental. 
 
164 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 And he made a lot of pills 
 Out of 3-x Graham flour, 
 Saying. "Take one every hour: 
 
 They will cure you of your ills." 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Any man will loose his grip 
 If he doesn t feel inclined, 
 When he has an "axe to grind, " 
 
 To be careful of his "lip." 
 
 PAVO. 
 
 Said a peacock unto Juno, 
 "What s the reason I can t sing? 
 See! a tail I can unfold 
 That is gorgeous to behold. 
 Tell me, tell me, if you do know, 
 What s the reason I can t sing, 
 When I m such a gorgeous thing? 
 
 Juno, answering the bird, 
 
 Half in earnest, half in fun, 
 Said injustice would be done 
 
 If all favors were conferred, 
 
 Of the many, upon one. 
 
PAVO. 165 
 
 FABULA DOCET. 
 
 Notwithstanding what we wish, 
 In this world of fact and fate, 
 Some must fish and some cut bait 
 
 Just a few of us can fish. 
 
 See that orphan boy at work, 
 
 Working early, working late; 
 
 He is learning how to wait, 
 He is learning not to shirk. 
 
 Then observe the rich man s son, 
 
 Aping style and making bets 
 
 Smoking idle cigarettes, 
 Talking chaff and having fun. 
 
 Thirteen years is not too late 
 For that orphan boy to wait; 
 
 Then he ll take that rich man s son, 
 
 And he ll stop his little fun, 
 And he ll set him cutting bait. 
 
 Then the rich man s son will wish, 
 
 As the iron years go by, 
 
 And the tears come in his eye, 
 That he had a chance to fish. 
 
 But his wish will come too late, 
 For the orphan, who meanwhile 
 Does the fishing, smiles a smile 
 
 And compels him to cut bait. 
 
166 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 AGRICOLA ET FILIUS. 
 
 Brown he runs a farm and ranch 
 By the billows of Lath Branch, 
 And he had a son named Jim, 
 Who had never learned to swim; 
 And one Sunday Jim was found 
 Down in Lath Branch partly drowned. 
 
 But old Brown knew what to do; 
 For he somewhere cut a limb, 
 And he somehow stayed with Jim, 
 
 And he somewhat brought him to. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Do not run a farm and ranch 
 By the billows of Lath Branch. 
 
 Men named Brown with boys named Jim. 
 
 Ought to teach their boys to swim. 
 Boys named Jim most always drown 
 If their other name be Brown. 
 
THE SWELL. 67 
 
 THE SWELL. 
 
 On the walk a hat did lie, 
 And a gallus chap sailed by, 
 
 And he cut a lively swell 
 
 He was clerk in a hotel; 
 
 And he gave that hat a kick , 
 And he came across a brick 
 
 Now upon a crutch he goes, 
 
 Minus half a pound of toes. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 When you see a person thrown 
 
 By misfortune or by vice, 
 
 Help him thrive or seven times thrice; 
 Help him up or let alone. 
 
 If you give the man a kick 
 
 You may stumble on a brick, 
 Or a stone. 
 
 Fate is liable to frown, 
 And the best of us go down; 
 
 And in just a little while 
 
 She is liable to smile. 
 And the bad luck and the vice t 
 
 Seem to scatter in a trice, 
 And to hunt their holes like mice. 
 
 And the man you tried to kick 
 
 Now has changed into a brick. 
 
168 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 PERSIMMONS. 
 
 Once a fox, upon the sly, 
 
 Some persimmons did behold, 
 So he got a pole and poled; 
 
 But he gave up with a sigh, 
 
 And acknowledged his mistake - 
 The persimmons wouldn t rake. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Then in sorrow he did say, 
 As he slowly walked away, 
 
 Fruit of that kind will elude 
 All our efforts, I am told, 
 If the pole witn which it s poled 
 
 Hasn t got the longitude. 
 
 "DRAW/ 
 
 Through the light-long summer day 
 
 Sam the game of "draw " did play; 
 Through the summer Sammy laughed, 
 Sang and played the game of draft. 
 
 G-ay and jolly and serene 
 
 With his breeches of nankeen. 
 
THE INVIDIOUS CANINE. 169 
 
 Through the doleful winter days 
 Still at poker Sammy plays; 
 
 G-one his songs, and smiles so bland; 
 
 He is waiting for a hand; 
 And the winter skies are chill 
 And he wears that nankeen still. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Draft and nankeen go together 
 Very well in summer weather, 
 
 But when winter time sets in 
 
 Draft and nankeen get too thin. 
 
 THE INVIDIOUS CANINE. 
 
 O er the rough and rocky ridge, 
 
 Leading downward with a path 
 To the brittle little bridge 
 
 That is hung across the Lath, 
 
 Came a large, inclement bull dog, full^of 
 
 wrath; 
 
 But the canine never tarried, 
 In his mouth he something carried 
 
 Like a miner, wide awake, 
 
 He had been and raised a steak. 
 
 Crossing on the bridge, his glance 
 To the water thrown by chance, 
 
 Saw another dog and meat 
 
 In precipitate retreat: 
 
 12 
 
170 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Then his onward course he slants, 
 And attempts to head them off 
 
 And his corpus now conceals 
 
 Half a barrelful of eels. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 When a man has raised a steak, 
 
 If he labors then to make 
 
 Some poor neighbor drop his meat. 
 It insures his own defeat. 
 
 No one merchant yet was made 
 Who could gobble all the trade, 
 Painfully misfortune pelts 
 Those who reach for some one else; 
 No one bull dog yet could eat 
 Every other bull dog s meat. 
 If you have a good-sized bone 
 Let the other dog alone. 
 
 LIMBURGER. 
 
 On a tree there sat a crow, 
 In his bill a chunk of cheese; 
 
 On the ground, a fox below 
 
 Said, Some music, if you please. 
 
 You are beautiful of wing, 
 
 And I bet that you can sing." 
 
< M>KU$ ET CAPER. 171 
 
 Cheered by flattery, the crow 
 Sang, and dropped the cheese below; 
 
 Then the cunning fox did freeze 
 
 To that fallen chunk of cheese, 
 And he calmly lugged it off, 
 And he scoffed the song with scoff. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 When they pat you on the back, 
 
 When they say that you re the one, 
 
 When they say they re on the track, 
 And "have been obliged to run; " 
 
 When their compliments denote 
 They are going for your vote, 
 
 You can do just as you please, 
 
 But you d better watch your cheese. 
 
 CAPERS ET CAPER. 
 
 From a chimney on the roof 
 
 Of the Wilder House hotel, 
 
 Did a William goat espy 
 
 An old army mule go by; 
 
 Spied those vast and sail-like ears - 
 And he jeered the mule with jeers. 
 
RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Then the mule he made a tack, 
 
 Brought his jib round to the wind. 
 
 Main and mizzen ears a-back, 
 
 And his starboard eye he skinned; 
 
 Then he reached that goat a hoof 
 
 That dismissed him from the roof. 
 
 SOLILOQUY. 
 
 Morals two this tale will teach: 
 First, There isn t any rule 
 
 That will cypher out the reach 
 Of an ancient army mule; 
 
 Second, There are many dangers 
 
 In mis-estimating strangers. 
 
 THE LIFE INSURANCE AGENT AN I ) 
 THE POST AUGER, 
 
 Very skillfully and fast, 
 
 Boring post-holes in the soil, 
 Worked an honest son of toil; 
 
 An insurance agent passed, 
 
 Saying, Such a perfect bore 
 I have never seen before. " 
 
 Then he sort of caught his breath, 
 
 And he talked that man to death. 
 
THE UNSOCIABLE MILESTONES. 173 
 
 HvEC FABULA. 
 
 Strange it is, somehow or other 
 
 We are bound to make a fuss, 
 When we notice in another 
 
 Vices that belong to us. 
 
 THE UNSOCIABLE MILESTONES. 
 
 Strung along a highway stood 
 Twenty milestones made of wood, 
 
 Undisturbed by storm or weather; 
 And the jokers said their say, 
 As they passed along the way: 
 How unsociable are they 
 
 Milestones never get together. 
 
 But the milestones cared not whether 
 It were worse or it were best 
 Undisturbed by jeer or jest, 
 
 Two were never seen together; 
 Duty made them what they were, 
 And they did not care to stir. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Men there are whose work, whose place, 
 Is, like milestones, to mark out 
 Both the distance and the route; 
 
 Both the destiny and way, 
 
 In the progress of the race. 
 
174 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Should they mingle with the throng- 
 That moves thoughtlessly along, 
 
 Then their duty they betray; 
 
 Lonesome, very lonesome, they; 
 But unmoved by hope or fear, 
 Undisturbed by jest or jeer, 
 
 There their duty and they stay. 
 
 SUCKER AND SALAMANDER, 
 
 AN AQUARIUM STORY. 
 
 In an ornamental jar, 
 
 Filled with blazing, red-hot tar, 
 
 Did a salamander swim; 
 In a thousand jolly ways 
 He disported in the blaze 
 
 It was fun alive for him. 
 
 With a less display of rank, 
 Swam a sucker in a tank, 
 
 And unto himself he said: 
 Would that I were in his place, 
 Swimming in that blazing vase, 
 
 And that he were in my stead. 
 
 An attendant heard the speech, 
 
 And he changed them each with each. 
 
LIGHTNING-BUG AND SKEETER. 175 
 
 Then the salamander sank 
 To the bottom of the tank, 
 
 In inanimate repose; 
 While the sucker curled and died, 
 Looking just as peeled and fried 
 
 As a Democratic nose. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Souls of fire may dare the fire, 
 May aspire 
 
 To rule the fire; 
 But the element consumes 
 Any SUCKER who presumes. 
 
 THE LIGHTNING-BUG AND THE 
 
 SKEETER. 
 
 Once a lightning-bug did fly 
 
 With a skeeter down the street, 
 
 One hot evening in July, 
 
 And these words he did repeat: 
 
 See me shine! see me shine! " 
 
 But the skeeter gave no sign 
 
 Of ambition or design, 
 
 And these words he did repeat: 
 
 ; None in mine! none in mine!" 
 
176 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Then an urchin, quick as scat. 
 
 With an agitated face 
 And an antiquated hat. 
 To the lightning-bug gave chase. 
 Then the skeeter joined the race; 
 
 Looked the ragged urchin o er: 
 Picked an unprotected place, 
 
 And he helped himself to gore. 
 
 DOCET. 
 
 Life is somewhat Janus-faced: 
 Look the situation o er, 
 
 Join the throng, and go for gore, 
 Or be brilliant and get chased. 
 
NEUTRALIA. 177 
 
 NEUTRALIA; 
 
 OB 
 
 LOVE, PHILOSOPHY AND WAR. 
 
 [My friend s story.] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Well! they fired upon Fort Sumter; I applied for a 
 commission, 
 
 And I got it through the efforts of a one-horse politi 
 cian. 
 
 And assumed the fearful grandeur that befitted the po 
 sition. 
 
 Being young, I got a detail on the staff of G-eneral 
 Skubobs; 
 
 Then I went and bought a quantity of military du- 
 bobs 
 
 First, a lot of gilded buttons, feathers, shoulder-straps 
 and sashes, 
 
 Then a little gilt-edged sabre, made for cutting swells 
 not gashes; 
 
 Then I went and bought my orderly a gorgeous coal- 
 black charger, 
 
 For myself 1 bought another that was just as black, 
 and larger; 
 
 Then with princely grace displayed them at the gen 
 eral s headquarters, 
 
 And I signed "by order of," to the military orders. 
 
178 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Now I pledge my sacred honor that there s nothing 
 that could charm me 
 
 Like a detail at the office of a man that ran an army; 
 
 And, I ll tell you confidentially, I honored the position, 
 
 And I served with much eclat, (if you know its defini 
 tion.) 
 
 V >ry senseless is the public, very obstinate and mulish, 
 
 In its reverence for trifles that are nothing else than 
 foolish; 
 
 And it honors gilded buttons makes no odds where 
 it may find them 
 
 But it never sees the person who is standing up be 
 hind them. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 What the world at large calls -rank" is a most im 
 posing building, 
 
 An enormous pasteboard palace, decked with minarets 
 and gilding; 
 
 Sages may pronounce it empty, and the preachers, 
 transitory, 
 
 But it isn t any difference as long as it is GLORY. 
 
 Go and galvanize a peddler, go and get the man a 
 
 scepter: 
 Won t he run his little kingdom just as if he d always 
 
 kept her? 
 Go and stick a lot of tinsel and some gilded buttons 
 
 on him: 
 Don t the princely little notions settle suddenly upon 
 
 him? 
 
NEUTRALIA. 179 
 
 Yes, before this piece of tinseling, the world s vertebral 
 
 column, 
 Ain t it bended in a manner that is comically solemn? 
 
 G-o and get a third-class drayman, stupid, awkward as 
 
 a camel: 
 I can wrap him up in purple, I can dope him with 
 
 enamel; 
 Then I ll call the man a ; monarch," and will put him 
 
 in a palace, 
 
 And I ll peg some courtiers round him, dressed con 
 spicuously gallus; 
 Then I ll gamble off my raiment, that, as certain as I 
 
 try it 
 That as sure as I invest him with the potent, royal 
 
 fiat 
 All the world will rush to honor him, in one convulsive 
 
 riot. 
 
 As regards these sage reflections, it is very much es 
 sential 
 
 That you keep them to yourself, for I got them confi 
 dential. 
 
 Just as soon as I had heard them, off I went and bought 
 a sabre, 
 
 And resolved to go for G-LORY, on some body else s labor; 
 
 And my dreamings of the future, with their hues kalei- 
 doscoptic, 
 
 Painted me a taurine youth with a very vitreous optic. 
 
180 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Then unto myself I said: While these skies are so pro 
 pitious, 
 
 I will go and see the elephant, and be like old Fabricius; 
 
 So I went and took a detail at the general s head 
 quarters, 
 
 And I signed his name, and mine, to the military orders. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Near the post where we were stationed was a city, 
 large and growing, 
 
 And its avenues and houses were with business over 
 flowing; 
 
 On the hills, beyond the echo of the fierce commercial 
 scramble, 
 
 Were the private houses builded, with magnificence Al- 
 hambral. 
 
 And the handsome, happy maidens, in unending swarms, 
 were flocking 
 
 Down the sidewalks, through the city, stopping, shop 
 ping, and a-blocking 
 
 Up the pavements; while the gay boys were continually 
 dashing 
 
 Through the highways, with the lightning-legged horse 
 flesh they were lashing. 
 
 I had scarcely made an entrance to my military station 
 
 Ere the city balls and parties sent me up an invitation; 
 
 There was one thing very certain, I was far from being 
 handsome. 
 
 But I am willing to affirm that I thought that I could 
 dance some. 
 
NEUTRALIA. 181 
 
 And through all this vale of sorrow, I was never known 
 
 to shirk a 
 
 Chance to enter in the spirit of a waltz or a mazurka; 
 And I find by computation that I ve worn out many 
 
 millions 
 Of this white Wisconsin flooring lumber, dancing square 
 
 cotillions. 
 
 Well! the gilded soldier buttons I was wearing seemed 
 
 to blind em, 
 While unseen, unknown and friendless, I was standing 
 
 up behind em; 
 But with many happy moments my official stay was 
 
 flavored, 
 And I found myself a guest, even more than honored, 
 
 favored. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Well! there came a grand old soiree, and the city all 
 attended, 
 
 And the hall was hung with flags and flowers, and dec 
 orations splendid; 
 
 And the chandeliers were shaded with a tissue gauze 
 that sent a 
 
 Sort of sifted light suffused with a delicate magenta. 
 
 And the splendid jewels glistened, and the ribbons and 
 
 the laces 
 In the tinted light seemed floating, like the drapery of 
 
 graces ; 
 
182 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 And the rich brocaded textures, with their rash, pecu 
 liar rustle, 
 
 Roared a ceaseless, sullen bass, to the all pervading 
 bustle. 
 
 Round the room the ladies floated, in their moire an 
 tique and satin, 
 
 While the men, behind large smiles, bowed to this n 
 and to that n, 
 
 And the floor was full of waltzers, and the air was 
 laughter laden, 
 
 While the orchestra, it sobbed like a broken-hearted 
 maiden. 
 
 And it moaned, and shrieked, and sobbed, in a wail for 
 human folly, 
 
 While the fiddlers chewed tobacco and looked very sol- 
 emncolly; 
 
 Then above the caller s calling, and the wild, tempestu 
 ous chatter, 
 
 Rose the grand combined results of the aggregated 
 clatter. 
 
 It was just about this moment that I made a sudden 
 
 entry, 
 
 That I added to the list of the dithyrambic gentry, 
 And I hardly had the time to appreciate it fully. 
 When a chap I didn t know said the thing was mighty 
 
 bully. 
 
NEUTRALIA. 183 
 
 I demanded then who HE was, and I frowned upon the 
 
 creature; 
 He confessed his name was Boggs, that his father was 
 
 a preacher; 
 Then inquired of me who I was, and I said I was an 
 
 aid-de- 
 Camp upon the staff of Skubobs; then he said there 
 
 was a lady 
 That he d like to have me dance with; I replied that I 
 
 was willing, 
 
 But I thought I really needed some preliminary drilling; 
 But he said it was no matter, and he thought that I 
 
 would answer, 
 For the lady he would find me was a very charming 
 
 dancer. 
 
 She would show me through the changes, if I needed 
 the instruction; 
 
 Then I told him to propel with his threatened introduc 
 tion; 
 
 Now, my backwardness was - stuff," for I had a certain 
 notion 
 
 That I simply was immense on the "poetry of motion." 
 
 Well! of human nature s phases, it s the funniest and 
 
 oddest, 
 When a man of frightful cheek makes an effort to be 
 
 modest. 
 
 CHAPTER v. 
 
 Yes, I took the introduction; Boggs alleged her name 
 
 was Laura; 
 So I made my finest bow, and I eyed the lady for a- 
 
184 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Bout a half a dozen seconds; then I asked her to de 
 termine 
 
 If she d have me for a partner in the next ensuing 
 German; 
 
 Then she smiled like the Madonna, and she told me 
 " Yes " so neatly, 
 
 That I drifted out to sea. and she captured me com 
 pletely. 
 
 I have heard them talk of Guido, of Vandyke, and of 
 Florello; 
 
 But I ll take my deposition that there never was a 
 fellow 
 
 Who could plaster any pigment onto canvas, or on 
 paper, 
 
 Or could ever make a picture that could ever hold a 
 taper, 
 
 Or could ever be compared, as to happiness of feature, 
 
 Or to symmetry of form, with the sunny-hearted crea 
 ture 
 
 That was pointed out by Boggs, the descendant of the 
 preacher. 
 
 Let old Virgil praise the naiads of the rapid, blue 
 Eurotas, 
 
 Spokeshave dance his airy fairies on the light leaves of 
 the lotos, 
 
 If you set them down by Laura, they would never get 
 a notice; 
 
 She had such a calm, bland way, and her tongue was 
 never running, 
 
 In an endless, eager effort to say something very cun 
 ning; 
 
NEUTRALIA. 185 
 
 And she looked you in the eye when she spoke or when 
 
 she listened. 
 And you always knew her feelings by the way her blue 
 
 eyes glistened. 
 
 There may be a woman fairer, with more elegant de 
 meanor, 
 
 With more useful information, calmer, lovelier, serener 
 But, if there be such a woman, this deponent hath not 
 seen her. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 On her finger gleamed a diamond, with prismatic hues 
 incessant, 
 
 On her neck a string of pearls, solid moonlight, opales 
 cent; 
 
 And upon her arms two bracelets, representing sprays 
 of laurel, 
 
 With their petioles of gold and their foliage of coral. 
 
 Or, at least, they say she wore them on the evening of 
 
 the soiree; 
 If she did, I never saw them all I thought or saw was 
 
 Laura; 
 But I guess she must have worn them, for the pompous, 
 
 ugly Madam 
 Parvenoodle since informed me that "old Banger s 
 
 daughter had em;" 
 But that all of Laura s jewels were much cheaper and 
 
 much duller. 
 And inferior to hers, both in brilliancy and color. 
 
 13 
 
18(> HHYME8 OF IKONQUILL. 
 
 Now, this Madam Parvenoodle, who disparaged every 
 body. 
 
 Was the very beau-ideal aristocracy of shoddy, 
 
 And her husband made his money, if I am not much 
 mistaken. 
 
 On a recent army contract on some ancient army bacon; 
 
 And, throughout her wide acquaintance, she divided u\ 
 her slander 
 
 As between her friends and enemies, with most impar 
 tial candor: 
 
 And she had a way of talking so that folks could un 
 derstand her. 
 
 Well, that night has flown forever, with its floor si 
 
 smoothly waxen! 
 Gone are all those chestnut ringlets gone thost 
 
 tresses brown and flaxen; 
 Gone those stand-up paper collars gone that faultless 
 
 Anglo-Saxon: 
 But they glitter in my fancy like the distant multi-he 
 
 dral 
 Steeples, domes and sunlit turrets, of some beautifu 
 
 cathedral. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 All the next day. and the next, that succeeded tlu 
 
 grand soiree. 
 I was crazy as a June bug. all I thought of was Miss 
 
 Laura; 
 All the office work got tangled with the thoughts o: 
 
 "fields Elysian," 
 And the ink was slung regardless of a requisite pre 
 
 clsion ; 
 
NEUTltALIA. 187 
 
 All the post returns got mixed, all the details and the 
 orders. 
 
 Till old Skubobs made remark that my mind seemed on 
 the borders 
 
 Of insanity or tremens said he thought he could dis 
 cover 
 
 Sad. cerebral indications of the drunkard or the lover. 
 
 Here he tipped a knowing twinkle at the cavalry in 
 spector. 
 
 Colonel Skopendyke. and Chopemup. the medical di 
 rector. 
 
 That was well enough for Skubobs: but the sutler 
 chipped in boldly 
 
 With an old azoic joke, and I told him. somewhat 
 coldly. 
 
 That if any individual should start a conversation 
 
 That would make this girl the subject of the slightest 
 observation. 
 
 I would jam his os frontalis. (that s a Latin name I bor 
 rowed 
 
 For a bone a person carries. I believe it s in his fore 
 head. ) 
 
 If there s any human being that can claim my deep 
 
 aversion. 
 
 It s a sutler in the army it may be a foul aspersion; 
 But when moralists are satirizing avarice and mammon, 
 Let the philanthropic skeptic, who inclines to think it s 
 
 gammon. 
 Watch a regimental sutler selling ; - bitters" and 
 
 canned salmon. 
 
188 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL, 
 
 Skubobs was a nice old man, very courteous and pleas 
 
 ant, 
 
 Brave as a Nemean lion, in a battle omnipresent; 
 He appreciated fun, was a dignified old ]oker, 
 Was a splendid judge of horseflesh, was an everlasting 
 
 smoker, 
 Punished ardent spirits mildly, was a perfect whale 
 
 at poker; 
 And he knew his occupation, for he d had a life-time 
 
 training 
 In the theory of war, and the practice of campaigning. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 There is something in a flag, and a little burnishec 
 
 eagle, 
 
 That is more than emblematic, it is glorious, it s regal, 
 You may never live to feel it. you may never be ir 
 
 danger, 
 You may never visit foreign lands, and play the ro/e o: 
 
 stranger; 
 You may never in the army check the march of an in 
 
 vader, 
 You may never on the ocean cheer the swarthy cannon 
 
 ader; 
 But if these should happen to you, then, when age is or 
 
 you pressing, 
 And your great, big, booby boy comes to ask your fina 
 
 blessing 
 
 You will tell him: Son of mine, be your station prouc 
 
 or frugal, 
 When your country calls her children, and you hear the 
 
 blare of bugle, 
 
NEUTRAL1A 189 
 
 Don t you stop to think of Kansas, or the quota of your 
 
 county, 
 Don t you go to asking questions, don t you stop for 
 
 pay or bounty. 
 But you volunteer at once: and you go where orders 
 
 take you. 
 And obey them to the letter, if they make you or they 
 
 break you; 
 Hunt that .flag, and then stay with it. be you wealthy 
 
 or plebeian; 
 Let the women, sing the dirges, scrape the lint and 
 
 chant the paean. 
 
 Though the magazines and journals teem with anti-war 
 
 persuasion. 
 And the stay-at-homes and cowards gladly take the like 
 
 occasion, 
 Don t you ever dream of asking. : Is the war a right or 
 
 wrong one? " 
 You are in it. and your duty is to make the fight a 
 
 strong one. 
 And you stay till it is over, be the war a short or long 
 
 one: 
 Make amends when war is over, then the power with 
 
 you is lying, 
 
 Then, if wrong, do ample justice but that flag, you 
 
 keep it flying: 
 If that flag goes down to ruin, time will then, without 
 
 a warning, 
 Turn the dial back to midnight, and the world must 
 
 wail till morning. 
 
11)0 RHYMES OF 111 ON QUILL. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Well! to shorten this narration, and prevent undue ex 
 pansion 
 
 Of a melancholy story, I will merely say, the mansion 
 
 Of old Banger saw me often, in response to invitation. 
 
 As the choice, acknowledged "brute" of the fairest 
 of creation. " 
 
 And the fairest used to send me a diurnal little glyphic 
 
 Of the hiero-variety that demoiselle lucific: 
 
 And to parties, balls and concerts we did very often go 
 
 forth, 
 And we talked of love and romance, moonshine, poetry 
 
 and so forth. 
 
 By the sacred muses nine, and the elves and fairies 
 
 with em, 
 You can just presume to reckon that I got to slinging 
 
 rhythm ; 
 
 Oh, the way I set em up this young lady of Caucasian 
 Antecedents, from her lover, got a stated daily ration 
 Of consolidated -bosh. 1 done up somewhat in this 
 
 fashion : 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ( Ahem ! ) 
 Am I but the sport of fancy? 
 
 Necromancy, 
 Has she taken 
 
 Me in charge ? 
 
NEUTRALIA. 191 
 
 My ideas, are they shattered, 
 
 So that scattered 
 They forsaken 
 
 Roam at large ? 
 Oh, I m crazy as a loon! 
 For this very afternoon 
 Down the street I saw her sailing like a barge. 
 
 There s a certain sort of feeling 
 
 That comes stealing 
 Over me 
 
 When around her: 
 Every one has an ideal. 
 
 Is mine real? 
 Can it be. 
 
 Have I found her? 
 Is it she, is it not? 
 That s the question I have got 
 It s a question I am going to propound her. 
 
 Never was a knight more eager 
 
 To beleaguer 
 Any town 
 
 That was walled; 
 Or to batter 
 
 Castles flatter 
 At the bidding of a crown 
 
 When it called 
 Than am I, and I would go 
 Almost anywhere, you know. 
 Why! I d lay the mountains low. 
 
192 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 Miss my dinner, 
 
 Catch a comet, scare an earthquake, drain the ocean; 
 
 Crack a planet like a nut, stop the motion 
 
 Of the sun and moon and stars, if I could win her. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 It s a fact that s very certain, man is naturally stupid. 
 And he somehow falls in love, and he lays it all to Cupid; 
 And he goes to rhapsodizing, and his comprehension 
 
 narrow 
 Shields his idiotic folly with the allegoric arrow. 
 
 And he throws away his time, and he throws away his 
 
 talents 
 That s the way it was with me. and I guess I m like the 
 
 balance; 
 And he loses just that moment all his judgment and 
 
 discretion, 
 When a female little woman gets him fairly in possession. 
 
 When a man is "dead in love," the successful rumina 
 tion 
 
 Of the plainest kind of gum is a difficult vocation. 
 
 "Ah! this thing they call affection is a thing that s very 
 shifting," 
 
 Argued Skopeiidyke, the colonel, when he saw my mat 
 ters drifting; 
 
 I had better cut him out, better give the youth a lift 
 ing 
 
NEUTRALIA. 193 
 
 Yes, I ll break up these arrangements, for I know that 
 
 he ll be gladder 
 In a dozen years from now. than he would be if he had 
 
 her; 
 And I ll get the girl myself, and the wedding vow will 
 
 pass its 
 Sort of warranty conveyance to old Banger s specie 
 
 assets." 
 
 Then he started in to. do it, and he got an introduction, 
 
 And before I knew my danger he was carrying destruc 
 tion 
 
 On the right flank and the left, through my hopes and 
 my ambitions, 
 
 And assaulting, one by one. all my salient positions. 
 
 This same colonel was a person very chatty, very fluent, 
 
 Full of talky-talk and smiles, and a perfect social truant; 
 
 He had never been contented, he had always been a 
 rambler, 
 
 He was every where at home, an adventurer and gambler; 
 
 He was just the style of person so successful in re 
 cruiting, 
 
 And it got him a commission; but when bugles got to 
 tooting, 
 
 He skipped back and "grabbed a root;" for he couldn t 
 stand the shooting; 
 
 He had not the slightest symptom of a shadow of a 
 fraction 
 
 Of a principle of honor or integrity of action; 
 
 He had flown o er land and sea, as a sort of human 
 condor, 
 
 Seeking for a girl and fortune he could pounce upon 
 and squander. 
 
194 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 So, in dealing with a woman there was nothing to re 
 strict him, 
 
 One could never be his idol, one could always be his 
 victim; 
 
 And there isn t a canal that has ever yet succeeded 
 In developing a mule having half the cheek that he did. 
 
 CHAPTER XJI. 
 
 When the status of affairs came before my observation, 
 
 I lit out for Laura s mansion, and embraced the first 
 occasion 
 
 To suggest how much I liked her; when I had her mind 
 refreshed on 
 
 That to me important topic, I propounded her a ques 
 tion: 
 
 Would she have me? would she not? She requested 
 me to bother 
 
 That outlandish old persimmon that she called her DKAH. 
 KIND father; 
 
 Well! I tipped back in my "cheer," found the armholes 
 of my weskit, 
 
 Stuck my thumbs in viewed the ceiling and con 
 cluded that I d "resk" it. 
 
 Old man Banger was a crabbed, overbearing, cross- 
 grained banker, 
 
 And he held onto his money like a ship does to its an 
 chor. 
 
 That a poor man could be honest was a fact he always 
 scouted; 
 
 That the end of man was money was a postulate un 
 doubted. 
 
NEUTHALIA. 195 
 
 And he worked, and tugged, and worked, with the grim 
 determination 
 
 That he d gobble all the currency there was in circula 
 tion. 
 
 Life for him had just two virtues, and these two he al 
 ways noticed; 
 
 They were, "never overdraw," and "protect your note 
 from protest. " 
 
 When I went to interview him Laura s dear, beloved 
 
 " paternal "- 
 There I found him in his office, in the evening, with 
 
 o " 
 
 the colonel; 
 And the colonel was a-bragging of the wealth that HE 
 
 was wielding; 
 Of the real estate HE owned, and the rental it was 
 
 yielding, 
 And he went on telling Banger how his ardent love 
 
 was centered 
 On the blue-eyed little Laura, when I came, and 
 
 knocked, and entered. 
 
 Just as soon as I beheld them, I as quickly apprehended 
 
 That my goose had just been cooked, and my love affair 
 was ended; 
 
 But I could not stop my action, it was too late to re 
 trace it, 
 
 And although I saw my danger, I determined I would 
 face it. 
 
196 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 All I had to say I said; but a glimmer of discredit 
 Overcame old Banger s features just the moment that I 
 
 said it: 
 And he rose upon his feet, and he paced the room a 
 
 minute, 
 And he kept his eye upon me with a world of sarcasm 
 
 in it. 
 
 Want my daughter, little Laura! well, I guess that I 
 
 can answer, 
 If you ll give me just a little information in advance, 
 
 sir: 
 How much coupons are you worth, how much ducats 
 
 can you put up? 
 This collateral s the stuff. How much assets do 
 
 you foot up? 
 Little Laura is expensive, and I don t want you to 
 
 court her 
 If you haven t got securities sufficient to support 
 
 her. " 
 
 Here we opened out our belfry, and replied: -Soverial 
 
 dollars 
 Worth of recklessness and shape, and a box of paper 
 
 collars. " 
 And we weighed him out a chunk, (on that bone that s 
 
 got that Latin 
 Name we spoke of once before.) and of course he had to 
 
 flatten. 
 
NEUTRALIA. 197 
 
 Then we turned upon the colonel, saying: "John, we ve 
 
 brought your saddle 
 Home and hung it on the floor." Here the colonel did 
 
 skedaddle 
 Through the door that we had opened for his egress, 
 
 and he ran on 
 Down the street, as if we d shot him from a twelve-inch 
 
 rifled cannon. 
 
 Then we took old Banger home in a bus that happened 
 
 handy, 
 
 And we bade him an adieu on the steps of his veranda; 
 And for many days thereafter Banger toted a proboscis 
 That was big enough to fit on the Rhodian colossus. 
 
 On the next day came our grief hope showed nothing 
 
 to abridge it 
 Laura wore the colonel s ring on her left, engagement 
 
 digit; 
 And we thought when we beheld her view us coldly like 
 
 a stoic, 
 That we d go and do a something most romantic ly 
 
 heroic. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 I can give you a prescription that will always make a 
 hero: 
 
 Go and get a full-fledge,d lover and reduce his hopes to 
 zero; 
 
 Get a man that loves a woman with devotion pure and 
 
 steady, 
 Let the woman go back on him, and your hero is all 
 
 ready; 
 
198 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 Now just turn him loose and watch him: See. old Cer 
 berus, he cringes! 
 
 See! the red-hot gates are beaten from their solid, 
 brazen hinges. 
 
 And ii ELI/ s blue platinum standards he is sabring into 
 fringes; 
 
 And he s dealing harsh percussion, with a violence vol 
 canic. 
 
 On the hacked and battered helmet of his majesty Sa 
 tanic. 
 
 Who calls wildly on his squadrons, that are crumbling 
 into panic. 
 
 I was feeling very ugly at the present trying juncture, 
 And I made my mind up fully that I really ought to 
 
 puncture 
 
 Colonel S. : s epidermis, as a moral obligation, 
 When old Skubobs got an order for a sudden change of 
 
 station. 
 And in eighty hours thereafter we were trying hard to 
 
 plant a 
 
 Little striped piece of bunting on the bastions of At 
 lanta; 
 
 And the vibratory roaring of the Parrot and the mortar 
 G-ave me something else to think of in the place of 
 
 Banger s daughter. 
 
 Who a thousand miles in safety from the carnival in 
 fernal. 
 Was a-dreaming of the danger of her rich and absent 
 
 colonel; 
 
 Who, not fancying the danger, got a detail of employ 
 Buying horses for our army corps in southern Illinois 
 
NEVTRA1AA. 199 
 
 All communities are cannon intellect is ammunition; 
 
 Man is simply a projectile, flung with more or less pre 
 cision. 
 
 And the more you jam him down, if he only has the 
 powder. 
 
 Why. the higher up he goes, and the gun it roars the 
 louder. 
 
 And the globe-sight of that cannon is a woman, and her 
 station 
 
 Is to give the rash projectile proper flight and eleva 
 tion 
 
 To the sky or to the mud it must go at her dictation. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Well, we chawed em at Atlanta we whaled em, we 
 
 flailed em. 
 And we raced them down through Georgia, till they 
 
 didn t know what ailed em: 
 And we sang and marched a-fighting. and we fit and 
 
 sang a-marching. 
 And we left a belt of charcoal through a country 
 
 scathed and parching. 
 But the grub gave out at last. GLORY could no more 
 
 elate us, 
 And we sighed for rice and mule-pie, and we foraged 
 
 sweet potatoes; 
 Till at last old Sherman told us: "Boys, we re just 
 
 o-bleeged to reach a 
 Little fleet of grub that s floating at the mouth of the 
 
 Ogeechee; 
 
200 RHYMES OF IRONQUILL. 
 
 But a fort, my cherished bummers, lies between you 
 
 and the water, 
 And we ve got to live on yams till you thieves have 
 
 gone and got her; 
 
 It s a perfect little daisy, and will have to be scaladed; 
 All the parapets are steep, scarp and glacis palisaded, 
 And the pathway of attack will be five-fold enfiladed." 
 Then he turned and asked old Hazen if he thought his 
 
 thieves could make it. 
 "Make it!" said old Hazen, "make it! ain t they just 
 
 o-bleeged to take it! " 
 
 Oh, the way that we went for it! and in just a holy 
 minute 
 
 We were through it, round it, under it, and over it and 
 in it; 
 
 Oh, the way we just went through em like a regi 
 ment of tunnels! 
 
 Till we struck our broad supply ships, with their fum 
 ing, fiery funnels, 
 
 And with rations on their decks, piled six yards above 
 the "gunnells. " 
 
 "See the bummers!" said old Sherman, with most ele 
 gant emotion, 
 
 "Ain t their heads as horizontal as the boozom of the 
 ocean? " 
 
 Old Tecumseh. he "sasha d" in a manner very frantic, 
 And lean Corse, of steep Altoona, he was equally as 
 
 antic: 
 
 They had finished the campaign from Atlanta to Atlan 
 tic. 
 
NEUTRALIA. 201 
 
 Then beside the tireless ocean did we cheer the spangled 
 
 banner, 
 And sing "Grood bye, Lizer Jane," in an incoherent 
 
 manner. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 What was little Laura doing? She was reading hasty 
 snatches, 
 
 Here and there, of grand, old battles, in the rapid press 
 dispatches; 
 
 She was looking through the papers for her rich, high- 
 minded suitor 
 
 He, the bravo of a parlor, he, the dashing, gay re 
 cruiter 
 
 Who had gambled and kept bar, from McGregor down 
 to Natchez 
 
 It was he that she was seeking in the rapid press dis 
 patches. 
 
 Then she said: "If I shall find him with the wounded, 
 
 dead or dying, 
 It will be with FAME S bay chaplet on his manly bosom 
 
 lying. 
 
 So intrepid and so fearless ah! my colonel, my Apollo, 
 Being led by such as thou art, who is he that dares 
 
 not follow? 
 
 All the world shall be emblazoned with thy rash, mag 
 netic valor" 
 
 Here she stopped to read a moment, and her face it 
 blanched with pallor, 
 
 14 
 
202 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 For she read a little "local," how the colonel, up at 
 Cairo, 
 
 Went and gambled off his money at a little game called 
 "faro." 
 
 With about a hundred thousand he had wisely been en 
 trusted, 
 
 So he hunted up a "tiger," and he stayed with it till 
 busted; 
 
 And he hadn t bought a horse so the colonel rose and 
 " dusted." 
 
 But they captured him at last, and they gave him an 
 impartial 
 
 Sort of trial down at Memphis, at a general court mar 
 tial; 
 
 And because he fed the tiger with some cash that wasn t 
 his n, 
 
 They contracted for his labor in a military prison. 
 
 Little Laura reads the local; not upon her taper finger 
 Does the amethystine circlet of the colonel longer linger, 
 But she throws it from her, shrieking and the blue- 
 eyed little dreamer, 
 
 Swooning on the Brussels carpet, lies without a single 
 tremor. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Many years have past and ended Colonel Skopendyke 
 
 is buried; 
 General Skubobs reached the Senate, his opponent being 
 
 ferried 
 
NEUTRALTA. 203 
 
 Up a salt, salciferous streamlet in the kingdom of Ken 
 tucky, 
 
 Just because his name wa n t Skubobs, which was cer 
 tainly unlucky. 
 
 And old Skubobs he is honest, draws his mileage and 
 per diem; 
 
 There are some who do not like him, but there s no one 
 that can buy him; 
 
 And he s never absent-minded, and you never see him 
 walking 
 
 Oil and leave his mouth behind him in the Senate cham 
 ber talking. 
 
 Boggs, the preacher s son, has vanished; from reports, 
 
 as far as we know, 
 
 He is up in Kansas City and a-canvassing for keno; 
 Years ago, in Cowley county, with a little twelve-inch 
 
 breaker, 
 He produced a crop of sod-corn, sixteen bushels to the 
 
 acre; 
 
 And he platted out a city, but he couldn t show a comer 
 Any corners, for the grass had grown so fearfully that 
 
 summer. 
 
 Doctor Chopemup, the surgeon, he has lately gone to 
 
 giving 
 Good advice instead of pills, and he makes an honest 
 
 living; 
 
 O 
 
 He has quit inspecting pulses and regenerating eye 
 balls, 
 
 And has gone to spreading tracts, and a-hammering on 
 Bibles. 
 
204 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 As he couldn t save men s bodies, he assumed the use 
 ful task a- 
 
 Saving all the balance of em, up in Omaha, Nebraska; 
 
 His best hold is "immortality," and he gives it to 
 them monthly, 
 
 And the deacons wake the snorers when he reaches 
 1 twenty-onethly. " 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Old man Banger is a pauper. When the banks began 
 to crumble. 
 
 And the price of gold was falling, he was ruined in the 
 tumble. 
 
 All his money and his courage simultaneously left him, 
 
 And unceasingly he murmurs at the bad luck that be 
 reft him. 
 
 Since his money has departed he has nothing left but 
 timor, 
 
 All that mercenary arrogance has gone without a glim 
 mer; 
 
 Money made him and unmade him, it was all that could 
 sustain him; 
 
 Fortune taking it away irretrievably had slain him. 
 
 Now a dreary monomania is slowly o er him stealing 
 
 A sort of " he-who-enters-here-leaves-hope-behind-him " 
 feeling. 
 
 Any man is BRAVE with money; braver far is he with 
 out it 
 
 Who dares always act uprightly, and not fret himself 
 about it. 
 
NEUTRALIA. 205 
 
 We should keep our faith and courage; if calamities 
 
 assail us, 
 If misfortunes swoop down on us, like the vultures of 
 
 Stymphalus, 
 
 It will never do to weaken, it is cowardice to fly them; 
 DolikeoldTroilian Ajax strike an attitude, defy them. 
 If we waver and fall back, Fate will ever then be urging 
 Us like quarry slaves at night-fall, homeward to our 
 
 dungeon scourging. 
 
 Madam Parvenoodle s husband is a prominent civilian, 
 He has sweetened Uncle Samuel for over half a million ; 
 Wherefore Madam got religious, and she jinedthe church 
 
 for morals. 
 And she prates about her Bible, and her neighbors, and 
 
 their quarrels; 
 And she says she s got a Saviour, and a spanking span 
 
 of sorrels. 
 
 Every man and every woman, irrespective of position, 
 
 Is a living, breathing romance, be they pauper or pa 
 trician. 
 
 Each day s doings make a pamphlet, which we bind in 
 gold and velvet, 
 
 And beside preceding volumes in our memory we shelve 
 it. 
 
 When at evening, tired of labor at the counter, shop or 
 forum, 
 
 In our stocking feet we saunter into memory s sancto 
 rum. 
 
206 RHYMES OF IRON QUILL. 
 
 We unshelve these treasured volumes, and we silently 
 
 look o er em; 
 Then we find, oh, fickle Hope! how you always hold back 
 
 from us 
 Just the very things we need, just the very things you 
 
 promise. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 When the work of day has ended, and the evening shuts 
 the skylight, 
 
 When the Northern Crown and Hydra stand transfig 
 ured in the twilight, 
 
 When Orion s blazing girdle gleams with hues of gold 
 and lilacs, 
 
 And around the pole careening whirls the phantom 
 Arcto-Phylax, 
 
 Oft I go to read these pamphlets, in the alcove where I 
 
 store them; 
 
 In the parlor of my memory, I one by one look o er them. 
 Wars are schoolings of the nations, and the records 
 
 ante-bellum 
 Are, like palimpsests, o erwritten in vermilion, gold and 
 
 vellum. 
 
 From the shelves I take them gently, with their gold 
 and velvet covers, 
 
 One by one I -turn their pages, read of heroines and 
 lovers; 
 
 Read of recklessness in man, read of constancy in woman, 
 
 Read of marches and of sieges, and endurance superhu 
 man, 
 
 Which the intervening years with prismatic hues illu 
 mine. 
 
NhUTRALIA. 207 
 
 Then my fancies change to dreaming, and the chandelier 
 
 burns dimmer, 
 And its rays begin to waver, with a pale, unsteady 
 
 glimmer; 
 And they wander o er the ceiling, and the sofa, floor 
 
 and curtain, 
 
 With irresolute demeanor, chilly, gloomily, uncertain; 
 And they quarrel with the shadows, which they vainly 
 
 try to banish, 
 Then they gather up their forces and mysteriously 
 
 vanish. 
 
 All at once come indications of a strange, odylic presence, 
 
 And the atmosphere and room teem with magic phos 
 phorescence; 
 
 Brighter grows the room and brighter, and eaoh com 
 ing moment tripples, 
 
 On the floor and walls the lustre of the live, electric 
 ripples. 
 
 And they stand in bold relief, every moment growing 
 bolder. 
 
 Till I feel some unseen fingers rest their weight upon 
 my shoulder; 
 
 Then I feel the thermal currents of some mild, mes 
 meric aura, 
 
 And it whispers I awaken twas the blue-eyed little 
 Laura. 
 
ADIEU. 
 
 Oft the reasonance of rhymes 
 Future hearts and distant times 
 
 May impress; 
 Shall humanity to me, 
 Like my Kansas prairies, be 
 
 Echoless ? 
 
 IRONQUILL. 
 
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