to trade on,
  Without nosin’ round to find out wut it’s made on,
  An’ the thought more an’ more thru the public min’ crosses
  Thet our Treshry hez gut ‘mos’ too many dead hosses. 
  Wut’s called credit, you see, is some like a balloon,
  Thet looks while it’s up ’most ez harnsome ’z a moon,
  But once git a leak in ‘t an’ wut looked so grand
  Caves righ’ down in a jiffy ez flat ez your hand. 
  Now the world is a dreffle mean place, for our sins,
  Where ther’ ollus is critters about with long pins
  A-prickin’ the globes we’ve blowcd up with sech care,
  An’ provin’ ther’ ‘s nothin’ inside but bad air: 
  They’re all Stuart Millses, poor-white trash, an’ sneaks,
  Without no more chivverlry ’n Choctaws or Creeks,
  Who think a real gennleman’s promise to pay
  Is meant to be took in trade’s ornery way: 
  Them fellers an’ I couldn’ never agree;
  They’re the nateral foes o’ the Southun Idee;
  I’d gladly take all of our other resks on me
  To be red o’ this low-lived politikle ’con’my!

  Now a dastardly notion is gittin’ about
  Thet our bladder is bust an’ the gas oozin’ out,
  An’ onless we can mennage in some way to stop it,
  Why, the thing’s a gone coon, an’ we might ez wal drop it. 
  Brag works wal at fust, but it ain’t jes’ the thing
  For a stiddy inves’ment the shiners to bring,
  An’ votin’ we’re prosp’rous a hundred times over
  Wun’t change bein’ starved into livin’ on clover. 
  Manassas done sunthin’ tow’rds drawin’ the wool
  O’er the green, anti-slavery eyes o’ John Bull: 
  Oh, warn’t it a godsend, jes’ when sech tight fixes
  Wuz crowdin’ us mourners, to throw double-sixes! 
  I wuz tempted to think, an’ it wuzn’t no wonder,
  Ther’ wuz reelly a Providence,—­over or under,—­
  When, all packed for Nashville, I fust ascertained
  From the papers up North wut a victory we’d gained,
  ‘T wuz the time for diffusin’ correc’ views abroad
  Of our union an’ strength an’ relyin’ on God;
  An’, fact, when I’d gut thru my fust big surprise,
  I much ez half b’lieved in my own tallest lies,
  An’ conveyed the idee thet the whole Southun popperlace
  Wuz Spartans all on the keen jump for Thermopperlies,
  Thet set on the Lincolnites’ bombs till they bust,
  An’ fight for the priv’lege o’ dyin’ the fust;
  But Roanoke, Bufort, Millspring, an’ the rest
  Of our recent starn-foremost successes out West,
  Hain’t left us a foot for our swellin’ to stand on,—­

  We’ve showed too much o’ wut Buregard calls abandon,
  For all our Thermopperlies (an’ it’s a marcy
  We hain’t hed no more) hev ben clean vicy-varsy,
  An’ wut Spartans wuz lef’ when the battle wuz done
  Wuz them thet wuz too unambitious to run.