WITH TRUMPET AND DRUM.

  With big tin trumpet and little red drum,
  Marching like soldiers, the children come! 
  It’s this way and that way they circle and file—­
  My! but that music of theirs is fine! 
  This way and that way, and after a while
  They march straight into this heart of mine! 
  A sturdy old heart, but it has to succumb
  To the blare of that trumpet and beat of that drum!

  Come on, little people, from cot and from hall—­
  This heart it hath welcome and room for you all! 
  It will sing you its songs and warm you with love,
  As your dear little arms with my arms intertwine;
  It will rock you away to the dreamland above—­
  Oh, a jolly old heart is this old heart of mine,
  And jollier still is it bound to become
  When you blow that big trumpet and beat that red drum.

  So come; though I see not his dear little face
  And hear not his voice in this jubilant place,
  I know he were happy to bid me enshrine
  His memory deep in my heart with your play—­
  Ah me! but a love that is sweeter than mine
  Holdeth my boy in its keeping to-day! 
  And my heart it is lonely—­so, little folk, come,
  March in and make merry with trumpet and drum!

THE DELECTABLE BALLAD OF THE WALLER LOT.

  Up yonder in Buena Park
  There is a famous spot,
  In legend and in history
  Yelept the Waller Lot.

  There children play in daytime
  And lovers stroll by dark,
  For ’tis the goodliest trysting-place
  In all Buena Park.

  Once on a time that beauteous maid,
  Sweet little Sissy Knott,
  Took out her pretty doll to walk
  Within the Waller Lot.

  While thus she fared, from Ravenswood
  Came Injuns o’er the plain,
  And seized upon that beauteous maid
  And rent her doll in twain.

  Oh, ’twas a piteous thing to hear
  Her lamentations wild;
  She tore her golden curls and cried: 
  “My child!  My child!  My child!”

  Alas, what cared those Injun chiefs
  How bitterly wailed she? 
  They never had been mothers,
  And they could not hope to be!

  “Have done with tears,” they rudely quoth,
  And then they bound her hands;
  For they proposed to take her off
  To distant border lands.

[Illustration:  LUCY ALEXANDER KNOTT.—­“HEROINE OF THE ’BALLAD OF THE WALLER LOT’” (NOTE BY EUGENE FIELD ON PHOTOGRAPH).

From a photograph by Max Platz, Chicago.]

  But, joy! from Mr. Eddy’s barn
  Doth Willie Clow behold
  The sight that makes his hair rise up
  And all his blood run cold.

  He put his fingers in his mouth
  And whistled long and clear,
  And presently a goodly horde
  Of cowboys did appear.

  Cried Willie Clow:  “My comrades bold,
  Haste to the Waller Lot,
  And rescue from that Injun band
  Our charming Sissy Knott! 
  “Spare neither Injun buck nor squaw,
  But smite them hide and hair! 
  Spare neither sex nor age nor size,
  And no condition spare!”