St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1882-10-21
Our Young Readers.
4 WONDERFUL COUNTR Y.
Did you ever hear of Good BoyLand, :,

Did you ever hear of Good Boy-Land,
| The wonderful country of Good Boy-Land?
| Where houses of tat1y, on every hand,
And mountains of plum cake and gingerbread
| stand;
| Where the streets are all paved with dough
| nuts brown,
And wall of sweet almonds surrounds each
| town;
Where a lemonade sea meets white sugar
| strand
Oh, believe me. it's jolly in Good-Boy-Land.
| Marbles, both agates and snappers are there
| Common rs dust in the streets and the square;
| Peg tops in place of green leaves, on the trees
| Whiz in the sunshine and hum in the breeze;
| Bicycles roll in very queer way
| over the meadows and hide i'll the hay,
| While as for velocipedes. running 50 quick,
! You'd hit half q dozen in throwing stick
Never before was a country SO grand
| As the wonderful Kingdom of Good oy-Land.
| Wait till tell you the very strange rules
Followed i'll all their most finurishlng schools!
out in the gardens their class-rooms are set
| (They never have rain, so they cannot get
WeD,
And there upon bushes the lessons all grow:
Plums OF arithmetic hang in row,
Apples of history, grapes of fine writing,
Dropping in clusters SO sweet and inviting.
Luscious ripe pears tumbling into their laps
Full of geography questions and maps,
Nuts full of spelling, and oranges sweet
With algebra problems all ready to eat:
Believe me or not, this is certainly so,
And the more that you swallow the more you
will know.
Then in the winter It's like to a dream,
With frozen pudding and fine ice-crram,
But no more cold than summer day,
And the garden OF lessons in bloom Away!
Merry sweet girls and bonny brown boys
Devouring Their studies and picking their toys,
Filling their lives i'll the jolest way.
With dates and statistics, with sums and GRO
quet,
For Ounce was thing that they never could
stand
In that wonderful country of Good-Boy-Land!
Never a quarrel, and never a scOld,
Never cough there, and never cold,
Nobody dirty, and nobody bold,
No one too hot there and no one too cold;
Nobody ever comes walking down-stair.
But slides on the banlSter. feet in the air;
Every one knows how to swim and to row,
Every one owns both a gun and Il bow,
A baseball, football, jack-knite, watch,
great pocket full of the best butter-scotch,
And this is the pleasantest part of the frolic-
You can eat it all day without getting the
collie!
Oh where is the government ever was planned
With such law and such order as GOOd-Boy-
Land?
Dolls are there, thicker than crows in the
Beautiful French ones as ever were born;
Story-books splendid in colors and gold,
Full of such stories as never were told;
There nothing to tear there and nothing to
mend,
And every ones every ones else best friend
gu get up tucFe dlIu late you llt ub"u,
And always you wear Kate GreenaWay
gown:
The wee-est wee girl both dances and sings
you see it's like Heaven, but mo one has
wingS)
And four-button gloves hang in pairs on each
hand,
In that wonderful country of Good oy-Land!
Where is the country? and how do you go?
Well that's just the thing am dying to know!
Somewhere, judge, in the moon or the stars,
Perhaps it is Venus perhaps it is Mars;
And you travel-who knows? by the boat or
the train,
Which leads one direct to the Castles-n-Spain,
Or some roundabout way that's not easy to
learn,
Verne,
Or telegraph wire, or the wing of bird
But L IL find the way first, and then send you
back word!
Mary E. Blake, in Wide Quake.