Wal, et sech times I jes’ slip out o’ sight
  An’ take it out in a fair stan’-up fight
  With the one cuss I can’t lay on the shelf,
  The crook’dest stick in all the heap,—­Myself.

  ‘T wuz so las’ Sabbath arter meetin’-time: 
  Findin’ my feelins wouldn’t noways rhyme
  With nobody’s, but off the hendle flew
  An’ took things from an east-wind pint o’ view,
  I started off to lose me in the hills
  Where the pines be, up back o’ ’Siah’s Mills: 
  Pines, ef you’re blue, are the best friends I know,
  They mope an’ sigh an’ sheer your feelins so,—­
  They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I swan,
  You half-forgit you ’we gut a body on.

  Ther’s a small school’us’ there where four roads meet,
  The door-steps hollered out by little feet,
  An’ side-posts carved with names whose owners grew
  To gret men, some on ’em, an’ deacons, tu;
  ’T ain’t used no longer, coz the town hez gut
  A high-school, where they teach the Lord knows wut: 
  Three-story larnin’ ’s pop’lar now; I guess
  We thriv’ ez wal on jes’ two stories less,
  For it strikes me ther’ ‘s sech a thing ez sinnin’
  By overloadin’ children’s underpitmin’: 
  Wal, here it wuz I larned my A B C,
  An’ it’s a kind o’ favorite spot with me.

  We ‘re curus critters:  Now ain’t jes’ the minute
  Thet ever fits us easy while we ’re in it;
  Long ez ‘t wuz futur’, ’t would be perfect bliss,—­
  Soon ez it’s past, thet time’s wuth ten o’ this;
  An’ yit there ain’t a man thet need be told
  Thet Now’s the only bird lays eggs o’ gold. 
  A knee-high lad, I used to plot an’ plan
  An’ think ’t wuz life’s cap-sheaf to be a man;
  Now, gittin’ gray, there’s nothin’ I enjoy
  Like dreamin’ back along into a boy: 
  So the ole school’us’ is a place I choose
  Afore all others, ef I want to muse;
  I set down where I used to set, an’ git
  My boyhood back, an’ better things with it,—­
  Faith, Hope, an’ sunthin’, ef it isn’t Cherrity,
  It’s want o’ guile, an’ thet’s ez gret a rerrity.

  Now, ’fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arternoon
  Thet I sot out to tramp myself in tune,
  I found me in the school’us’ on my seat,
  Drummin’ the march to No-wheres with my feet. 
  Thinkin’ o’ nothin’, I’ve heerd ole folks say,
  Is a hard kind o’ dooty in its way: 
  It’s thinkin’ everythin’ you ever knew,
  Or ever hearn, to make your feelins blue. 
  I sot there tryin’ thet on for a spell: 
  I thought o’ the Rebellion, then o’ Hell,
  Which some folks tell ye now is jest a metterfor
  (A the’ry, p’raps, it wun’t feel none the better for);
  I thought o’ Reconstruction, wut we ’d win
  Patchin’ our patent self-blow-up agin;
  I thought ef tins ‘ere milkin’ o’ the wits,
  So much, a month, warn’t givin’ Natur’ fits,—­
  Ef folks warn’t druv, findin’ their own milk fail,
  To work the cow thet hez an iron tail,
  An’ ef idees ‘thout ripenin’ in the pan
  Would send up cream to humor ary man: 
  From this to thet I let my worryin’ creep,
  Till finally I must ha’ fell asleep.