THE OVERWORKED GHOST

  When the embalmer closed my eyes,
    And all the family went in black,
  And shipped me off to Paradise,
    I had no thought of coming back;
  I dreamed of undisturbed repose
    Until the Judgment Day went crack,
  Tucked safely in from top to toes.

  “I’ve done my bit,” I said.  “I’ve earned
    The right to take things at my ease!”
  When folk declared the dead returned,
    I called it all tomfooleries. 
  “They are too glad to get to bed,
    To stretch their weary limbs in peace;
  Done with it all—­the lucky dead!”

  But scarcely had I laid me down,
    When comes a voice:  “Is that you, Joe? 
  I’m calling you from Williamstown! 
    Knock once for ‘yes,’ and twice for ‘no.’”
  Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two—­
    The table shook, I banged it so—­
  “Not Joe!” they said, “Then tell us who?

  “We’re waiting—­is there no one here,
    No friend, you have a message for?”
  But I pretended not to hear. 
    “Perhaps he fell in the great war?”
  “Perhaps he’s German?” someone said;
    “How goes it on the other shore?”
  “That’s no way to address the dead!”

  And so they talked, till I got sore,
    And made the blooming table rock,
  And ribald oaths and curses swore,
    And strange words guaranteed to shock. 
  “He’s one of those queer spooks they call
    A poltergeist—­the ghosts that mock,
  Throw things—­” said one, who knew it all.

  “I wish an old thigh-bone was round
    To break your silly head!” I knocked. 
  “A humourist of the burial-ground!”
    A bright young college graduate mocked. 
  Then a young girl fell in a trance,
    And foamed:  “Get out—­we are deadlocked—­
  And give some other ghost a chance!”

  Such was my first night in the tomb,
    Where soft sleep was to hold me fast;
  I little knew my weary doom! 
    It even makes a ghost aghast
  To think of all the years in store—­
    The slave, as long as death shall last,
  To ouija-boards forevermore.

  For morning, noon, and night they call! 
    Alive, some fourteen hours a day
  I worked, but now I work them all. 
    No sooner down my head I lay,
  A lady writer knocks me up
    About a novel or a play,
  Nor gives me time for bite or sup.

  I hear her damned typewriter click
    With all the things she says I say,
  You’d think the public would get sick;
    And that’s my only hope—­some day! 
  Then seances, each night in dozens
    I must attend, their parts to play
  For dead grandpas and distant cousins.

  O for my life to live again! 
    I’d know far better than to die;
  You’d never hear me once complain,
    Could I but see the good old sky,
  For here they work me to the bone;
    “Rest!”—­don’t believe it!  Well, good-by! 
  That’s Patience Worth there on the phone!