Pike County Ballads | Page 2

the field.
In 1890 there was published, in ten volumes, at New York, by the New
York Century Company, "Abraham Lincoln, a History: by John G.
Nicolay and John Hay." This was, with fresh material inserted, a
collection of chapters that had been published in The Century
Magazine from November 1886 to the beginning of 1890. The friends,
who worked equally together upon this large record, said, "We knew
Mr. Lincoln intimately before his election to the Presidency. We came
from Illinois to Washington with him, and remained at his side and in
his service--separately or together- -until the day of his death."
Abroad, as at home, Colonel Hay has been active in the service of his
country. In 1865 he went to Paris as Secretary of Legation, and after
remaining two years in that office he went as Charge-d'Affaires for the

United States to Vienna. After a year at Vienna, Colonel Hay went to
Madrid as Secretary of Legation under General Daniel Sickles. In 1870
he returned to the United States, and was for the next five years an
editorial writer for the New York Tribune. During seven months, when
Whitelaw Reid was in Europe, Colonel Hay was editor in chief.
It was for The Tribune that Hay wrote "The Pike County Ballads,"
which were first reprinted separately in 1871, and are placed first in the
collection of his poems. In the same year he published his "Castilian
Days," inspired by residence in Spain.
In 1876 Colonel Hay removed from New York to Cleveland, Ohio. He
then ceased to take part in the editing of The Tribune, but continued
friendly service as a writer. From 1879 to 1881 Colonel Hay served
under President Hayes as Assistant-Secretary of State in the
Government of the United States. In 1881 he was President of the
International Sanitary Congress at Washington. Since that time he has
been active, with John G. Nicolay, in the preparation and production of
the full Memoir of Abraham Lincoln, now completed, that will take
high rank among the records of a war which, in its issues, touched the
future of the world, perhaps, more nearly than any war since Waterloo,
not even excepting the great struggle which ended at Sedan.
That is the life of a man, here is its music.
H. M.
THE PIKE COUNTY BALLADS.
JIM BLUDSO, OF THE "PRAIRIE BELLE."
Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Becase he don't live, you see;

Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar
have you been for the last three year
That you haven't heard folks tell

How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie
Belle?
He weren't no saint,--them engineers
Is all pretty much alike, -
One
wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill,
And another one here, in Pike;
A

keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,

But he never flunked, and he never lied, -
I reckon he never knowed
how.
And this was all the religion he had, -
To treat his engine well;

Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever
the Prairie Belle took fire, -
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold
her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last, -

The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle she WOULDN'T be
passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night -
The oldest craft
on the line -
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her
furnace crammed, rosin and pine.
The fire bust out as she clared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,

And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on
the right.
There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out,
Over all
the infernal roar,
"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last
galoot's ashore."
Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludso's voice
was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he
would keep his word.
And, sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore
the smokestacks fell, -
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the
smoke of the Prairie Belle.
He weren't no saint,--but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,

'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shook hands with
him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing, -
And went for it thar and
then;
And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard
On a man that died for
men.
LITTLE BREECHES.

I don't go much on religion,
I never ain't had no show;
But I've got
a middlin' tight grip, sir,
On the handful o' things I know.
I don't
pan out on the prophets
And free-will, and that sort of thing, -
But I
b'lieve in God and the angels,
Ever sence one night last spring.
I come into town with some turnips,
And my little Gabe come along,
-
No four-year-old in the county
Could beat him for pretty and
strong,
Peart and chipper and