Now a family row is a private affair,
And guests, I am certain, should never be there;
I have freely maintained that a man and his wife
Cannot always agree on their journey through life,
But they ought not to bicker and wrangle and shout
And show off their rage when their friends are about;
It takes all the joy from a party, I vow,
When some couple starts up a family row.

It’s a difficult job to stay cool and polite
When your host and your hostess are staging a fight: 
It’s hard to talk sweet to a dame with a frown
Or smile at a man that you want to knock down. 
You sit like a dummy and look far away,
But you just can’t help hearing the harsh things they say. 
It ruins the dinner, I’m telling you now,
When your host and your hostess get mixed in a row.

The Lucky Man

Luck had a favor to bestow
And wondered where to let it go.

“No lazy man on earth,” said she,
“Shall get this happy gift from me.

“I will not pass it to the man
Who will not do the best he can.

“I will not make this splendid gift
To one who has not practiced thrift.

“It shall not benefit deceit,
Nor help the man who’s played the cheat.

“He that has failed to fight with pluck
Shall never know the Goddess Luck.

“I’ll look around a bit to see
What man has earned some help from me.”

She found a man whose hands were soiled
Because from day to day he’d toiled.

He’d dreamed by night and worked by day
To make life’s contest go his way.

He’d kept his post and daily slaved,
And something of his wage he’d saved.

He’d clutched at every circumstance
Which might have been his golden chance.

The goddess smiled and then, kerslap! 
She dropped her favor in his lap.

Lonely

They’re all away
  And the house is still,
And the dust lies thick
  On the window sill,
And the stairway creaks
  In a solemn tone
This taunting phrase: 
  “You are all alone.”

They’ve gone away
  And the rooms are bare;
I miss his cap
  From a parlor chair. 
And I miss the toys
  In the lonely hall,
But most of any
  I miss his call.

I miss the shouts
  And the laughter gay
Which greeted me
  At the close of day,
And there isn’t a thing
  In the house we own
But sobbingly says: 
  “You are all alone.”

It’s only a house
  That is mine to know,
An empty house
  That is cold with woe;
Like a prison grim
  With its bars of black,
And it won’t be home
  Till they all come back.

The Cookie Jar

You can rig up a house with all manner of things,
The prayer rugs of sultans and princes and kings;
You can hang on its walls the old tapestries rare
Which some dead Egyptian once treasured with care;
But though costly and gorgeous its furnishings are,
It must have, to be homelike, an old cookie jar.