From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 117-118.
COAL SUBSTITUTES
It may be that some men with pull
Can keep their cellar coal bins full
And feed their fires both day and night
With good old-fashioned anthracite,
But as for me you bet your boots,
I’m using these here substitutes.
It takes a man of great acumen,
Such as I fear is granted few men,
To burn this villanous bitumen.
It pours out smoke in billowy swells
And fills the house with dark brown smells.
It throws out soot in blobs and blots
And makes us look like Hottentots.
I take each day, ere Phœbus rises,
My daily dozen exercises.
I stretch and strain and twist and stamp,
To meet the views of Walter Camp.
Then with the poker in my hand
I do some stunts he never planned,
While with the same I reach and tinker
To worry out some cussed clinker.
With costly coal I hourly stoke,
And often, when I go to poke,
[118]
I get a rush of flame and smoke
That busts out through the furnace door
And blows me off across the floor.
You have to treat this soft coal gentle;
The gosh darn stuff is temperamental.
O all of us will fell like new men
When we are through with soft bitumen.
Our hard coal may be short in weight
And long on limestone, shale, and slate,
But when once more it fills my bins
I’ll hail it with exultant grins.
Yea, I will raise some happy hoots
When it comes shooting through the chutes.