It is rarely a
boy allows himself to disregard the paternal summons. About once a year is
believed to be as often as is consistent with the rules of health. He saves
his father a great many steps by his thoughtfulness.
* * * * *
AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE.
O good painter, tell me true,
Has your hand the cunning to draw
Shapes of things that you never saw?
Aye? Well, here is an order for you.
Woods and cornfields a little brown,--
The picture must not be over bright,--
Yet all in the golden and gracious light
Of a cloud when the summer sun is down.
Alway and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn
Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,
When the wind can hardly find breathing room
Under their tassels,--cattle near,
Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumach and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around,--
Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!
These and the little house where I was born,
Low, and little, and black, and old,
With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows, open wide,--
Heads and shoulders clear outside,
And fair young faces all ablush;
Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding the self-same way,
Out of a wilding, way-side bush.
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