n both day and night,
And he's always blest with an appetite!

{31}

[Illustration: And so likewise do the farmhands stare]

{33}

A tin o' black coffee, and a rhuburb pie--
Be they old and cold as charity--
They're hot-stuff enough for the pore hobo,
And it's "Thanks, kind lady, for to treat me so!"

Then he fills his pipe with a stub cigar
And swipes a coal from the kitchen fire,
And the hired girl says, in a smilin' tone,--
"It's good-by, John, if you call that goin'!"

Oh, the hobo's life is a roving life,
It robs pretty maids of their heart's delight--
It causes them to weep and it causes them to mourn
For the life of a hobo, never to return.

[Illustration: A hobo voluntary--tailpiece]

{34}

[Illustration: Be our fortunes as they may--headpiece]

BE OUR FORTUNES AS THEY MAY

Be our fortunes as they may,
Touched with loss or sorrow,
Saddest eyes that weep to-day
May be glad to-morrow.

Yesterday the rain was here,
And the winds were blowing--
Sky and earth and atmosphere
Brimmed and overflowing.

{35}

But to-day the sun is out,
And the drear November
We were then so vexed about
Now we scarce remember.

Yesterday you lost a friend--
Bless your heart and love it!--
For you scarce could comprehend
All the aching of it;--

But I sing to you and say:
Let the lost friend sorrow--
Here's another come to-day,
Others may to-morrow.

[Illustration: Be our fortunes as they may--tailpiece]

{36}

I SMOKE MY PIPE

I can't extend to every friend
In need a helping hand--
No matter though I wish it so,
'Tis not as Fortune planned;
But haply may I fancy they
Are men of different stripe
Than others think who hint and wink,--
And so--I smoke my pipe!

A golden coal to crown the bowl--
My pipe and I alone,--
I sit and muse with idler views
Perchance than I should own:--
It might be worse to own the purse
Whose glutted bowels gripe
In little qualms of stinted alms;
And so I smoke my pipe.

{37}

[Illustration: And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds]

{39}

And if inclined to moor my mind
And cast the anchor Hope,
A puff of breath will put to death
The morbid misanthrope
That lurks inside--as errors hide
In standing forms of type
To mar at birth some line of worth;
And so I smoke my pipe.

The subtl