Songs and Other Verse | Page 5

any harm there. For was not the church militant now assembled? Besides, had they not obeyed the law of the General Court that each congregation should carry a 'competent number of pieces, fixed and complete with powder and shot and swords, every Lord's-day at the meeting-house?' And, right well equipped 'with psalm-book, shot and powder-horn' sat that doughty man, Shear Yashub Millard along with Hezekiah Bristol and four others whose issue I have known pleasantly in the flesh here; and those of us who had no pieces wore 'coats basted with cotton-wool, and thus made defensive against Indian arrows.' Yet it bethought me that there was no defence against what I had devoured on Christmas day. I had rather been the least of these,--even he who 'blew the Kunk'--than to be thus seated there and afeared that the brethren in the 'pitts' doubted I had true religion. That I had found a proper seat--even this I wot not; and I quaked, for had not two of my kin been fined near unto poverty for 'disorderly going and setting in seats not theirs by any means,' so great was their sin. It had not yet come upon the day when there was a 'dignifying of the meeting.' Did not even the pious Judge Sewall's second spouse once sit in the foreseat when he thought to have taken her into 'his own pue?' and, she having died in a few months, did not that godly man exclaim: 'God in his holy Sovereignity put my wife out of the Foreseat'? Was I not also in recollection by many as one who once 'prophaned the Lord's Day in ye meeting-house, in ye times of ye forenoone service, by my rude and Indecent acting in Laughing and other Doings by my face with Tabatha Morgus, against ye peace of our Sovereign Lord ye King, His crown and Dignity?'"
At this, it appears that I groaned in my sleep, for I was not only asleep here and now, but I was dreaming that I was asleep there and then, in the meeting-house. It was in this latter sleep that I groaned so heavily in spirit and in body that the tithing-man, or awakener, did approach me from behind, without stopping to brush me to awakening by the fox-taile which was fixed to the end of his long staffe, or even without painfully sticking into my body his sharp and pricking staffe which he did sometimes use. He led me out bodily to the noone-house, where I found myself fully awakened, but much broken in spirit. Then and there did I write these verses, which I send to you:
"Mother," says I, "is that a pie?" in tones akin to scorning; "It is, my son," quoth she, "and one full ripe for Christmas morning! It's fat with plums as big as your thumbs, reeking with sapid juices, And you'll find within all kinds of sin our grocery store produces!"
"O, well," says I,
"Seein' it's _pie_
And is guaranteed to please, ma'am,
By your advice,
I'll take a slice,

If you'll kindly pass the cheese, ma'am!"
But once a year comes Christmas cheer, and one should then be merry, But as for me, as you can see, I'm disconcerted, very;?For that pesky pie sticks grimly by my organs of digestion, And that 't will stay by me till May or June I make no question.
So unto you,
Good friends and true,
I'll tip this solemn warning:
At every price,
Eschew the vice

Of eating pie in the morning.
FRANK W. GUNSAULUS.?Chicago, March, 1896.
THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK
THE SINGING IN GOD'S ACRE
THE DREAM-SHIP
TO CINNA
BALLAD OF WOMEN I LOVE
SUPPOSE
MYSTERIOUS DOINGS
WITH TWO SPOONS FOR TWO SPOONS
MARY SMITH
JESSIE
TO EMMA ABBOTT
THE GREAT JOURNALIST IN SPAIN
LOVE SONG--HEINE
THE STODDARDS
THE THREE TAILORS
THE JAFFA AND JERUSALEM RAILWAY
HUGO'S "POOL IN