Page:Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley (Bobbs-Merrill, 1916) Volume 1.djvu/57

Rh And drillers

And tillers

And cucumber hillers,

And horries;—and had patent rollers and scrapers,

And took about ten agricultural papers.

So you can imagine how matters turned out:

But Brown didn't have not a shadder o' doubt

That Smith didn't know what he was about

When he said that "the old way to farm was played out."

But Smith worked ahead,

And when any one said

That the old way o' workin' was better instead

O' his "modern idees," he allus turned red,

And wanted to know

What made people so

Infernally anxious to hear theirselves crow?

And guessed that he'd manage to hoe his own row.

Brown he come onc't and leant over the fence,

And told Smith that he couldn't see any sense

In goin' to such a tremendous expense

Fer the sake o' such no-account experiments:—

"That'll never make corn!

As shore's you're born

It'll come out the leetlest end of the horn!"

Says Brown, as he pulled off a big roastin'-ear

From a stalk of his own

That had tribble outgrown

Smith's poor yaller shoots, and says he, "Looky here!