Page:Earth-Hunger and Other Essays.djvu/400

 "You can't play that on the old man again," he said; "it's lost its varnish, it's played out. Step up, my son."

Unwillingly Jimmy stepped up.

In a moment he was stepping up more than ever, for the deacon was pelting him all over with a stout switch, which felt the reverse of agreeable.

But finally he was released and crawled dolefully up to bed.

There are things nicer than going to bed at four o'clock on a bright, breezy, fall day, and Jimmy knew so.

"This here is getting awful stale," he meditated, rolling and tossing in his cot, "and you can smother me with fish-cakes if I stand it. I'm going to run away, and come back to dis old one-hoss town when I'm a man, in a gold-band wagon with silver wheels and six Maltese mules a-drawing it. Probably the old man will be in the poorhouse then, swallerin' shadow soup with an iron spoon, and it will make him cranky to think dat he didn't used ter let me have my own way and boss things. Yes, by golly, I'll give him the sublime skip."

The songs and dialogues are almost all utterly stupid. The dialogues depend for any interest they have on the most vapid kind of negro minstrel buffoonery. The songs, without having any distinct character, seem often to be calculated to win applause from tramps and rioters. The verse, of all before us, which has the most point to it, is the following. What the point is requires no elucidation:

Boss Tweed is a man most talked about now,

His departure last winter caused a great row;

Of course we all knew it was not a square game,

But show me the man who would not do the same.

When Sweeney, Genet and Dick Connolly took flight,

He stood here alone and made a good fight;

He did wrong, but when poor men were greatly in need,

The first to assist them was William M. Tweed.