Page:Field Poems of Childhood.djvu/99



OME, Harvey, let us sit a while and talk about the times Before you went to selling clothes and I to peddling rimes— The days when we were little boys, as naughty little boys As ever worried home-folks with their everlasting noise! Egad! and, were we so disposed, I'll venture we could show The scars of wallopings we got some forty years ago; What wallopings I mean I think I need not specify— Mother's whippings didn't hurt, but father's! oh, my!

The way that we played hookey those many years ago— We'd rather give 'most anything than have our children know! The thousand naughty things we did, the thousand fibs we told— Why, thinking of them makes my Presbyterian blood run cold! How often Deacon Sabine Morse remarked if we were his He'd tan our "pesky little hides until the blisters riz"! It's many a hearty thrashing to that Deacon Morse we owe— Mother's whippings didn't count—father's did, though!