The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-04-25
In the Year Two.

just how the world wagged in the old Year Two,
When people were simpler and science was new,
Is a very great puzzle to inc and to you.
Though students are eager the records are meager;
1t is hard to distinguish the false from the true.
But the path to knowledge surely possess,
The Yankee path. cross lots to know ito guessl
We can spose and conf lecture, and probably show
That people did thus and didn't do so;
But as for the truth of it, what do we know?
Books then understand, were constructed by hand
In editions of one, to meet the demand
Except when authors had little to do,
And burdened the trade with editions of two)
Now, strange to relate twas the commonest fate
For book in those days, and even as late
As times of Aurean and Caesar the Great,
To, somehow or other, fall into the fire,
And leave very litte-when swept up entire
Residual ash to the papyrus quire.
SO you see why the records were meager and few
OF what people did or attempted to do
In the Year Two.
However It's quite a legitimate guess
That their business, their pleasures and their habits
of dress
Would make people stare in the year 'Eighty-eight.
For thing I'll warrant they never could dance
In high-heeled French boots voluminous pants;
And even the thought of an ugly, tall tile,
In the classic Year Two would have made people
smile.
will venture to say that folks clothes had a way
vi gracefully HttlHB W lidl carry udy
without putting, padding, or pinnng, or stay.
They undoubtedly flowed as though they had
"growed"
On shoulders and limbs by natural mode.
And that will whisper, between you and me,
Is a fashion in clothes would willingly
Revived in the case of me and of you,
From the Year Two!
I wonder how dudes Jared them under the sun,
How banks were conducted, how politics run.
Did people go shopping and say How de do"
In the streets of great Thebes, in the far-of Year
Two?
Did the ancient policemen grasp tightly the collar
OF every poor wretch who had stolen a dollar.
While justice looked down with bow and smile
on one who had stolen million meanwhile?
How it, wonder, in Vanity Fair?"
Did ladies wear coils of unnatural hair
And powder their faces and simulate graces
And knead out their wrinkles with infinite care?
Did they suffer themselves to be cruelty laced
For the sake of an ugly Slim pivotal waist
A horrible instance of horrible taste?
And did they detract from the charm of their
presence
BY a dreadfully vulgar kind of eXcrescence,
Suggestive of naught but the Simian link?
Did they disgrace themselves thus, do you think,
Parading the CHASTITY, suppressing the true,
In the Year Two?
A truce to conjecture! It's all in the air;
An arrow shot here and an arrow shot there.
And most of us hardly would give an old shoe
venture to say it between me and you
To know what took place in the misty Year Two
Undoubtedly things went both crooked and straight
And folks grumbled then at the issues of fate,
just they do in this year lightweight.
They had their successes, they had their reverses;
And some carried slim and some plethoric purses.
They ate and they drank they laughed and they
sorrowed;
They lent when they had to, and when they could
borrowed.
And then at the last, haven't a doubt
Their affairs being settled, they bowed themselves
out
Knowing fully much as I or you
OF the mystery back of the curtain of blue
In the Year Two.
flames Buckhdm, in independent.