Songs of Friendship | Page 9

the failing fire. . . .
You are
restless:--I presume

There's a dampness in the room.--
Much of
warmth our nature begs,
With rheumatics in our legs! . . .
Humph! the legs we used to fling
Limber-jointed in the dance,


When we heard the fiddle ring
Up the curtain of Romance,
And in
crowded public halls
Played with hearts like jugglers' balls.--
_Feats
of mountebanks, depend!_--
Tom Van Arden, my old friend.
Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Pardon, then, this theme of mine:

While the firelight leaps to lend
Higher color to the wine,--
I
propose a health to those
Who have _homes_, and home's repose,

Wife- and child-love without end!
. . . Tom Van Arden, my old
friend.
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[Illustration: Our old friend Neverfail--headpiece]
OUR OLD FRIEND NEVERFAIL
O it's good to ketch a relative 'at's richer and don't run When you holler
out to hold up, and'll joke and have his fun; It's good to hear a man
called bad and then find out he's not, Er strike some chap they call
lukewarm 'at's really red-hot;
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It's good to know the Devil's painted jes' a leetle black, And it's good to
have most anybody pat you on the back;-- But jes' the best thing in the
world's our old friend Neverfail, When he wags yer hand as honest as
an old dog wags his tail!
I like to strike the man I owe the same time I can pay,
And take back
things I've borried, and su'prise folks thataway; I like to find out that
the man I voted fer last fall,
That didn't git elected, was a scoundrel
after all;
I like the man that likes the pore and he'ps 'em when he can;
I like to meet a ragged tramp 'at's still a gentleman;
But most I
like--with you, my boy--our old friend Neverfail, When he wags yer
hand as honest as an old dog wags his tail!
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MY BACHELOR CHUM
A corpulent man is my bachelor chum,
With a neck apoplectic and
thick--
An abdomen on him as big as a drum,
And a fist big enough
for the stick;
With a walk that for grace is clear out of the case,
And
a wobble uncertain--as though
His little bow-legs had forgotten the
pace
That in youth used to favor him so.
He is forty, at least; and the top of his head
Is a bald and a glittering
thing;
And his nose and his two chubby cheeks are as red
As three
rival roses in spring;
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[Illustration: His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in]
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His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in,
And his laugh is so
breezy and bright
That it ripples his features and dimples his chin

With a billowy look of delight.
He is fond of declaring he "don't care a straw"--
That "the ills of a
bachelor's life
Are blisses, compared with a mother-in-law
And a
boarding-school miss for a wife!"
So he smokes and he drinks, and he
jokes and he winks,
And he dines and he wines, all alone,
With a
thumb ever ready to snap as he thinks
Of the comforts he never has
known.
But up in his den--(Ah, my bachelor chum!)--
I have sat with him
there in the gloom,
When the laugh of his lips died away to become

But a phantom of mirth in the room.
And to look on him there you
would love him, for all
His ridiculous ways, and be dumb
As the
little girl-face that smiles down from the wall
On the tears of my
bachelor chum.

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[Illustration: Art and poetry--headpiece]
ART AND POETRY
TO HOMER DAVENPORT
Wess he says, and sort o' grins,
"Art and Poetry is twins!
"Yit, if I'd my pick, I'd shake
Poetry, and no mistake!
"Pictures, allus, 'peared to _me_,
Clean laid over Poetry!
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"Let me _draw_, and then, i jings,
I'll not keer a straw who sings.
"'F I could draw as you have drew,
Like to jes' swop pens with you!
"Picture-drawin' 's my pet vision
Of Life-work in Lands Elysian.
"Pictures is first language we
Find hacked out in History.
"Most delight we ever took
Was in our first Picture-book.
"'Thout the funny picture-makers,
They'd be lots more undertakers!
"Still, as I say, Rhymes and Art
'Smighty hard to tell apart.
"Songs and pictures go together
Same as birds and summer weather."
So Wess says, and sort o' grins,
"Art and Poetry is twins."
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[Illustration: Down to the Capital--headpiece]

DOWN TO THE CAPITAL
I' be'n down to the Capital at Washington, D. C.,
Where Congerss
meets and passes on the pensions ort to be Allowed to old one-legged
chaps, like me, 'at sence the war Don't wear their pants in pairs at
all--and yit how proud we are!
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Old Flukens, from our deestrick, jes' turned in and tuck and made Me
stay with him whilse I was there; and longer 'at I stayed The more I
kep' a-wantin' jes' to kind o' git away,
And yit a-feelin' sociabler with
Flukens ever' day.
You see I'd got the idy--and I guess most