John Smith, U.S.A.

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Title: John Smith, U.S.A.
Author: Eugene Field
Release Date: June 23, 2004 [EBook #12696]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN SMITH,
U.S.A. ***
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[Illustration: Eugene Field]
JOHN SMITH
U.S.A.
BY
EUGENE FIELD
AUTHOR OF
THE CLINK OF THE ICE
IN WINK-A-WAY-LAND

HOOSIER LYRICS, ETC.
1905.
INTRODUCTION.
From whatever point of view the character of Eugene Field is seen,
genius--rare and quaint presents itself is childlike simplicity. That he
was a poet of keen perception, of rare discrimination, all will admit. He
was a humorist as delicate and fanciful as Artemus Ward, Mark Twain,
Bill Nye, James Whitcomb Riley, Opie Read, or Bret Harte in their
happiest moods. Within him ran a poetic vein, capable of being worked
in any direction, and from which he could, at will, extract that which
his imagination saw and felt most. That he occasionally left the
child-world, in which he longed to linger, to wander among the older
children of men, where intuitively the hungry listener follows him into
his Temple of Mirth, all should rejoice, for those who knew him not,
can while away the moments imbibing the genius of his imagination in
the poetry and prose here presented.
Though never possessing an intimate acquaintanceship with Field,
owing largely to the disparity in our ages, still there existed a bond of
friendliness that renders my good opinion of him in a measure
trustworthy. Born in the same city, both students in the same college,
engaged at various times in newspaper work both in St. Louis and
Chicago, residents of the same ward, with many mutual friends, it is
not surprising that I am able to say of him that "the world is better off
that he lived, not in gold and silver or precious jewels, but in the
bestowal of priceless truths, of which the possessor of this book
becomes a benefactor of no mean share of his estate."
Every lover of Field, whether of the songs of childhood or the poems
that lend mirth to the out-pouring of his poetic nature, will welcome
this unique collection of his choicest wit and humor.
CHARLES WALTER Brown.
Chicago, January, 1905.

CONTENTS.
John Smith
The Fisherman's Feast
To John J. Knickerbocker, Jr.

The Bottle and the Bird
The Man Who Worked with Dana on the
"Sun"
A Democratic Hymn
The Blue and the Gray
It is the
Printer's Fault
Summer Heat
Plaint of the Missouri 'Coon in the
Berlin Zoological Gardens The Bibliomaniac's Bride
Ezra J.
M'Manus to a Soubrette
The Monstrous Pleasant Ballad of the Taylor
Pup
Long Meter
To DeWitt Miller
Francois Villon
Lydia Dick

The Tin Bank
In New Orleans
The Peter-Bird
Dibdin's Ghost

An Autumn Treasure-Trove
When the Poet Came
The Perpetual
Wooing
My Playmates
Mediaeval Eventide Song
Alaskan
Balladry
Armenian Folk-Song--The Stork
The Vision of the Holy
Grail
The Divine Lullaby
Mortality
A Fickle Woman
Egyptian
Folk-Song
Armenian Folk-Song--The Partridge
Alaskan Balladry,
No. 1
Old Dutch Love Song
An Eclogue from Virgil
Horace to
Maecenas
Horace's "Sailor and Shade"
Uhland's "Chapel"
"The
Happy Isles" of Horace
Horatian Lyrics
Hugo's "Pool in the Forest"

Horace I., 4
Love Song--Heine

Horace II., 3
The Two Coffins

Horace I., 31
Horace to His Lute
Horace I., 22
The "Ars
Poetica" of Horace XXIII
Marthy's Younkit
Abu Midjan
The
Dying Year
Dead Roses
JOHN SMITH.
To-day I strayed in Charing Cross as wretched as could be With
thinking of my home and friends across the tumbling sea; There was no
water in my eyes, but my spirits were depressed And my heart lay like
a sodden, soggy doughnut in my breast. This way and that streamed
multitudes, that gayly passed me by-- Not one in all the crowd knew
me and not a one knew I!
"Oh, for a touch of home!" I sighed; "oh,
for a friendly face! Oh, for a hearty handclasp in this teeming desert
place!" And so, soliloquizing as a homesick creature will,
Incontinent,
I wandered down the noisy, bustling hill
And drifted, automatic-like

and vaguely, into Lowe's,
Where Fortune had in store a panacea for
my woes.
The register was open, and there dawned upon my sight

A name that filled and thrilled me with a cyclone of delight-- The name
that I shall venerate unto my dying day--
The proud, immortal
signature: "John Smith, U.S.A."
Wildly I clutched the register and brooded on that name-- I knew John
Smith, yet could not well identify the same.
I knew him North, I
knew him South, I knew him East and West-- I knew him all so well I
knew not which I knew the best.
His eyes, I recollect, were gray, and
black, and brown, and blue, And, when he was not