r "ROBERT REESE")

Once there was a little boy
Whose name was Robert Reese,
And every Friday afternoon
He had to speak a piece.

So many poems thus he learned
That soon he had a store
Of recitations in his head
And still kept learning more.

Now this it is what happened:
He was called upon one week
And totally forgot the piece
He was about to speak.

His brain he vainly cudgeled
But no word was in his head,
And so he spoke at random,
And this is what he said;

My beautiful, my beautiful,
Who standest proudly by,
It was the schooner Hesperus
The breaking waves dashed high.

Why is the Forum crowded?
What means this stir in Rome?
Under a spreading chestnut tree
There is no place like home.

When Freedom from her mountain height
Cried, "Twinkle, little star,"
Shoot if you must this old gray head,
King Henry of Navarre.

If you're waking, call me early
To be or not to be,
Curfew must not ring to-night,
Oh, woodman, spare that tree.

Charge, Chester, Charge! On, Stanley, on!
And let who will be clever,
The boy stood on the burning deck
But I go on for ever.

The Kid Has Gone to the Colors

The Kid has gone to the Colors
And we don't know what to say;
The Kid we have loved and cuddled
Stepped out for the Flag to-day.
We thought him a child, a baby
With never a care at all,
But his country called him man-size
And the Kid has heard the call.

He paused to watch the recruiting,
Where, fired by the fife and drum,
He bowed his head to Old Glory
And thought that it whispered: "Come!"
The Kid, not being a slacker,
Stood forth with patriot-joy
To add his name to the roster--
And God, we're proud of the boy!

The Kid has gone to the Colors;
It seems but a little while
Since he drilled a schoolboy army
In a truly martial style,
But now he's a man, a soldier,
And we lend him a listening ear,
For his heart is a heart all loyal,
Unscourged by the curse of fear.

His dad, when he told him, shuddered,
His mother--God bless her!--cried;
Yet, blest with a mother-nature,
She wept with a mother-pride,
But he whose old shoulders straightened
Was Granddad--for memory ran
To years when he, too, a youngster,
Was changed by the Flag to a man!

_W.M. Herschell._

Kentucky Belle

Summer of 'sixty-three, sir, and Conrad was gone away--
Gone to the county-town, sir, to sell our first load of hay--
We lived in th