Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1903-08-08


fever? It's that strange, indescribable
disease that drives one to thinking
of his 'boyhood days down on the
farm" Happy days! Would I were
boy again that I might carry in
wood and "shoo' the BOTTLES off the
bottles Of milk in the milk house. Oh!
| remember, as though it were yes
terday, how stood at the COW stable
door and caught the butter firkins as
father made the old bossies cough
them up, one by one. And the eggs
| gathered from the hens nests in the
old elm trees! Strawberries grew pro-
fusely on the straWs in our stubble
field, and many time as I showed my
bare feet along the stubble to fiatten
the points, the straw stems got be-
tween my toes and the great, succu-
lent, red strawberries rolled up my
ankles, up, up my trousers leg into
my vest pocket! Many and many a
the placid little lake that Tapped and
fused on fathers farm, and
But the geetwisticus of the liver is
a bad ailment. 1t causes otherwise
sensible men to write poetry and pro-
pose to widows. These are the two
forms generally diagnosed. Willie it
is hard on our friends, 1--WE feel truly
thankful this evening" that our attack
took the former route. The first verse
was like this
Down in the run" where the blue-bells
Mem ries of boyhood air beckonin me-
Once upon a time we knew an
Englishman who clipped his ''g's," and
we decided to roll up our trousers
legs at the bottom, to make believe it
was raining in London, and to clip our
sg's" just as though we had s3een &C
customed to it. Having sharpened our
saw we cut off another spasm. When
it had been doctored thoroughly, it
read like this:
Meadow larks carol, in rapsodies
Heart throbS, that wing to the sky and
the leaS.
That looked good to us, like our
wife who has been away on a long
visit, and we raised the meat ak again.
1t fell! And this is the next verse:
Frogs in the bayou go "chug! ker plunk"
Sun in the red west be almost sunk!
We felt quite at home on the back
of Pegasus after writing this. having
been associated with frogs all our life.
Did you ever hold a frog by the left
hind toes and have him try to
kick loose? Il is great sport, little
hard on the frog, but entertaining in
the extreme, especially if you are a
woman, because every time the frog
kicks you will scream and teeter
around like a cockroach on hot flap
jack griddle. The fourth spout re-
minded us Of spot out back of
mothers raspberry bushes, where we
annually did stunts with a four-tined
fork and tomato can. 1t went like
this:
Worms in the bait can squirmin' en-
maSSe
Fearin the teeth of the game rock
bass.
In bullhead time we carried our
worms loose in the pocket of our short
coat because no boy that ever tackled
a good bullhead hole when the wind
is in the west" could ever take time
to run back and forth to a baitbox ON
a stump. Some people do not carry
their worms in the same manner we
did-but that is neither here nor there,
at least it isn't here! kh, there!
But ITO return to the geetw ticus Of
the liver The next four verses came
in a lump like an extra drag of reIa-
tives on circus day, and here they
are:
Sinner and crappie and pumpkin
Founder and flop in the minnie-pail.
Cotched every one with a new snare
Boughten with eggs what I jest done
took.
Shirt Of denim and trousers blue
Hair sun dried to a sorrel hue;
Feet a-scarred some, with a tan OF
Hang from the bridge to the water down.
BY this time we were getting
"cnesty" and decided to throw off the
rest with one swell foop-we mean
fell swoop! We did. Here it is, is it:
Bobber she goes with Jump like mad !;
Bout the steenth bite and no fish, by
dad.
Let i'm dun hav u. clean up to um's
tail
Gehosiphat! but I've hooked 'er whale!"
go it, by thunder, you firhtin' shad
Don't git way from this ere OIL lad!''
Water whipped white, to feathery
foam.
Tickles me yet as 1 trudge ford home!
Then having completely finished the
poem, we employed trick of the
trade to make it longer and more
impressive We tackled the first verse
onto the tail end;
Down in the run" where the blue-bells
be
Memres of boyhood air beckonin me
Quite q handful OF years ago we
hadAa girl who encouraged US to write
poetry. She said that with careful