An’ sometimes, in the fairest sou’west weather, 120
My innard vane pints east for weeks together,
My natur’ gits all goose-flesh, an’ my sins
Come drizzlin’ on my conscience sharp ez pins: 
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.

‘Twuz so las’ Sabbath arter meetin’-time: 
Findin’ my feelin’s wouldn’t noways rhyme
With nobody’s, but off the hendle flew 130
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 feelin’s so,—­
They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I swan,
You half-forgit you’ve 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 140
To gret men, some on ’em, an’ deacons, tu;
’tain’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 underpinnin’: 
Wal, here it wuz I larned my ABC,
An’ it’s a kind o’ favorite spot with me.

We’re curus critters:  Now ain’t jes’ the minute 150
Thet ever fits us easy while we’re in it;
Long ez ‘twuz futur’, ’twould 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 ’twuz 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 160
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,—­
While Fancy’s cushin’, free to Prince and Clown,
Makes the hard bench ez soft ez milk-weed-down.

Now, ’fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arternoon
When I sot out to tramp myself in tune,
I found me in the school’us’ on my seat, 170
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 feelin’s 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