Louis told the hour of eight a.m.!
Three quaint Bohemian bottles, too, of yellow and of green,
Cut in archaic fashion that I ne'er before had seen;
A lovely, hideous platter wreathed about with pink and rose,
With its curious depression into which the gravy flows;
Two dainty silver salts--oh, there was no resisting _them_--
And I'd blown in twenty dollars by nine o'clock a.m.
With twenty dollars, one who is a prudent man, indeed,
Can buy the wealth of useful things his wife and children need;
Shoes, stockings, knickerbockers, gloves, bibs, nursing-bottles, caps,
A gown--_the_ gown for which his spouse too long has pined, perhaps!
These and ten thousand other spectres harrow and condemn
The man who's blown in twenty by nine o'clock a.m.
Oh, mean advantage conscience takes (and one that I abhor!)
In asking one this question: "What _did_ you buy it for?"
Why doesn't conscience ply its blessed trade _before_ the act,
_Before_ one's cussedness becomes a bald, accomplished fact--
_Before_ one's fallen victim to the Tempter's stratagem
And blown in twenty dollars by nine o'clock a.m.?
Ah me! now that the deed is done, how penitent I am!
I _was_ a roaring lion--behold a bleating lamb!
I've packed and shipped those precious things to that more precious wife
Who shares with our sweet babes the strange vicissitudes of life,
While he who, in his folly, gave up his store of wealth
Is far away, and means to keep his distance--for his health!
MY PLAYMATES
The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool--
Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool;
It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill,
And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning trill;
So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know
Where the sassafras and snakeroot and checkerberries grow.
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