But the keenest grief I ever felt
Was when my mother beside me knelt,
An' cried and prayed, till I melted down,
As I wouldn't for half the horses in town.
I kissed her fondly, then an' there,
An' swore henceforth to be honest and square.
I served my sentence--a bitter pill
Some fellows should take who never will;
And then I decided to go "out West,"
Concludin' 'twould suit my health the best;
Where, how I prospered, I never could tell,
But Fortune seemed to like me well,
An' somehow every vein I struck
Was always bubbling over with luck.
An' better than that, I was steady an' true,
An' put my good resolutions through.
But I wrote to a trusty old neighbour, an' said,
"You tell 'em, old fellow, that I am dead,
An' died a Christian; 'twill please 'em more,
Than if I had lived the same as before."
But when this neighbour he wrote to me,
"Your mother's in the poor house," says he,
I had a resurrection straightway,
An' started for her that very day.
And when I arrived where I was grown,
I took good care that I shouldn't be known;
But I bought the old cottage, through and through,
Off some one Charley had sold it to;
And held back neither work nor gold,
To fix it up as it was of old.
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