The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor | Page 4

a peach.'?Now, if you want to answer with a speech,?Open your trap at once, or else lie still."
But when I handed Gill the Grip this cluster?He simply clamped his language-mill down tight,?Strangled his guff and acted rather fluster?Although I'm sure I spoke to him polite.?I guess that Mr. Gilly ain't the kind?That understands when people talk refined.
X
Three days with sad skidoo have came and went,?Yet Pansy cometh nix to ride with me.?I rubber vainly at the throng to see?Her golden locks - gee! such a discontent!?Perhaps she's beat it with some soapy gent -?Perhaps she's promised Gill the Grip to be?His No. 1 till Death tolls "23!"?While I am Outsky in the supplement.
Now and anon some Lizzie flags the train?And I, poor dots, cry, "Rapture, it is her!"?Yet guess again - my hope is all in vain?And Pansy girl refuses to occur.?If this keeps up I think I'll finish swell?Among the jabbers in a padded cell.
XI
My Trolley hikes to Harlem p.d.q.,?And picks up pikers all along the beat.?At six o'clock the aisles are full of feet,?The straps with fingers, and the entire zoo?Boils on the platform with a mad huroo?Reckless as Bronx mosquitoes after meat.?The widow stands, the fat man gets the seat?And Satan smiles like Foxy M. Depew.
And as we hikes along I thinks, thinks I,?"The human race is like the ocean foam,?Roaring and discontented, peevish, fly - "?Say, why in blazes don't they stay to home??This travel-sickness is a danger which?Keeps hoboes poor and corporations rich.
XII
Today I piped my future Ma-in-law.?She got aboard my Pullman and she scared?Three babies into fits the way she glared.?Rattle my baggage if I ever saw?A cracker-box to equal Mother's jaw,?A hardwood-finish face all nailed and squared.?She ossified the gripman when she stared -?And me? Well, I was overcame with awe.
But, being Pansy's Ma, 't was up to me?To hand her something pit-a-pat and swell,?And so I says, "Hello, Queen Cherokee!?What ho! for Pansy? hope she's feeling well."?And Ma responds, a trifle tart but game,?"She minds her bizness - hope you feel the same."
XIII
I don't think Mother chalked me out to win,?To be the steady of her darling child.?She thinks I am a kick-up, something wild,?And no sweet girl should wear my college pin.?She thinks I'm some too piffly with my chin?And my soft prattle simply gets her riled.?I've lost my keys with her, to put it mild,?I don't belong, because I am not In.
Say how, with such an iceberg on the track,?Can I conduct my car to married bliss??I hoped that I could whistle Pansy back,?And lo! I got a frostbite off of this!?I'd wrastle Death for Her, I'd fight her Pa, -?But stab me if I'll syrup to her Ma!
XIV
E'en as I stood with cobwebs in my tower?A candy vision came and flagged the boat -?Give forty rah-rah-rahs! O joy, O gloat!?'Twas Pansy like a fairy in a bower?Warbling, "Hi, stop the car!" With all my power?I yanked the bell. My brain was all afloat,?My heart cut pin-wheels, stole a base at throat,?Sang "Tammany" - and knighthood was in flower.
I helped her on. My shoes were full of feet.?I says, "How's Ma?" She answers, "Going some."?I doffed my lid and ventured to repeat?The breeze had put the weather on the bum.?Then she replied, not seeming sore or vexed,?"It may not be so punk on Sunday next."
XV
The Sinful Rich go whizzing by all day?In wealthy wagons, looking pert and swell;?They get the ride, the Commons get the smell?And full of thought and microbes wend their way.?Maxy the Firebug says that Mammon's sway?Is stringing Virtue to a fare-ye-well,?But wait, he says, till Labor with a yell?Soaks Mam a crack forninst the vertebray.
The Rich, says Max, are simply dips and yeggs?That lift the headlight beads from yaps like us;?They pinch your pie, sew up our ham and eggs?And leave us minus all that they are plus.?The world, says Max, belongs to me and Bill?And Mrs. Casey - whoa! let's roll a pill!
XVI
At Mrs. Casey's hunger-killing shop?Whither I hie thrice daily for my stew,?I dream I'm Mr. Waldorf as I chew?My prunes or lay my Boston-baked on top.?Growley and sinkers, slum and mutton sop,?India-rubber jelly known as "glue,"?A soup-bone goulash with a spud or two,?Clatter below until I signal "Stop!"
There may be chefs in France or Albany?Can knock a poem from a wedge of pie;?But just give me a check on Mrs. C.,?For rapid-filling ballast, murmurs I.?Kings may prefer some tasty wads of hash,?But they don't feed at fifteen cents per crash!
XVII
Pansy and me for Coney Sunday noon?To see a perfect lady bump the bumps;?We rubbered at the lions with the chumps?And took the Wellman special to the moon.?She asks me, "Dance?" I answers, "Just as soon,"?And so we clutched and whirled into the gumps,?But every time I went to stir my stumps?They stuck like