[BACK]     [Blueprint]     [NEXT]



From The Wit and Humor of America, edited by Marshall P. Wilder, Volume III, New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls and Company, 1911; pp. 486-487.


486

A DOS’T O’ BLUES

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

I’ got no patience with blues at all!

And I ust to kindo talk

Aginst ’em, and claim, ’tel along last Fall,

They was none in the fambly stock;

But a nephew of mine, from Eelinoy,

That visited us last year,

He kindo convinct me differunt

While he was a-stayin’ here.

Frum ever’-which way that blues is from,

They’d tackle him ever’ ways;

They’d come to him in the night, and come

On Sundays and rainy days;

They’d tackle him in corn-plantin’ time,

And in harvest, and airly Fall,

But a dos’t of blues in the wintertime,

He ’lowed, was the worst of all!

Said all diseases that ever he had — 

The mumps, er the rheumatiz — 

Er ever’-other-day-aigger’s bad

Purt’ nigh as anything is! — 

Er a cyarbuncle, say, on the back of his neck,

Er a felon on his thumb, — 

But you keep the blues away from him,

And all o’ the rest could come!

487

And he’d moan, “They’s nary a leaf below!

Ner a spear o’ grass in sight!

And the whole wood-pile’s clean under snow!

And the days is dark as night!

You can’t go out — ner you can’t stay in — 

Lay down — stand up — ner set!”

And a tetch o’ regular typhoid-blues

Would double him jest clean shet!

I writ his parents a postal-kyard,

He could stay ’tel Spring-time come;

And Aprile first, as I rickollect,

Was the day we shipped him home!

Most o’ his relatives, sence then,

Has either give up, er quit,

Er jest died off; but I understand

He’s the same old color yit!











[BACK]     [Blueprint]     [NEXT]