Is a bald and a glittering thing;
And his nose and his two chubby cheeks are as red
As three rival roses in spring;

{75}

[Illustration: His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in]

{77}

His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in,
And his laugh is so breezy and bright
That it ripples his features and dimples his chin
With a billowy look of delight.

He is fond of declaring he "don't care a straw"--
That "the ills of a bachelor's life
Are blisses, compared with a mother-in-law
And a boarding-school miss for a wife!"
So he smokes and he drinks, and he jokes and he winks,
And he dines and he wines, all alone,
With a thumb ever ready to snap as he thinks
Of the comforts he never has known.

But up in his den--(Ah, my bachelor chum!)--
I have sat with him there in the gloom,
When the laugh of his lips died away to become
But a phantom of mirth in the room.
And to look on him there you would love him, for all
His ridiculous ways, and be dumb
As the little girl-face that smiles down from the wall
On the tears of my bachelor chum.

{78}

[Illustration: Art and poetry--headpiece]

ART AND POETRY

TO HOMER DAVENPORT

Wess he says, and sort o' grins,
"Art and Poetry is twins!

"Yit, if I'd my pick, I'd shake
Poetry, and no mistake!

"Pictures, allus, 'peared to _me_,
Clean laid over Poetry!

{79}

"Let me _draw_, and then, i jings,
I'll not keer a straw who sings.

"'F I could draw as you have drew,
Like to jes' swop pens with you!

"Picture-drawin' 's my pet vision
Of Life-work in Lands Elysian.

"Pictures is first language we
Find hacked out in History.

"Most delight we ever took
Was in our first Picture-book.

"'Thout the funny picture-makers,
They'd be lots more undertakers!

"Still, as I say, Rhymes and Art
'Smighty hard to tell apart.

"Songs and pictures go together
Same as birds and summer weather."

So Wess says, and sort o' grins,
"Art and Poetry is twins."

{80}

[Illustration: Down to the Capital--headpiece]

DOWN TO THE CAPITAL

I' be'n down to the Capital at Washington, D. C.,
Where Congerss meets and passes on the pensions ort to be
Allowed to old one-legged chaps, like me, 'at sence the war
Don't wear their pants in pairs at all--and yit how proud we are!

{81}

Old Flukens, from our deestrick, jes' turned in