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 dose'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!

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 tyfoid-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!

MORRIS AND THE HONORABLE TIM[3]

BY MYRA KELLY

On the first day of school, after the Christmas holidays, teacher found
herself surrounded by a howling mob of little savages in which she had
much difficulty in recognizing her cherished First-Reader Class. Isidore
Belchatosky's face was so wreathed in smiles and foreign matter as to be
beyond identification; Nathan Spiderwitz had placed all his trust in a
solitary suspender and two unstable buttons; Eva Kidansky had entirely
freed herself from restraining hooks and eyes; Isidore Applebaum had
discarded shoe-laces; and Abie Ashnewsky had bartered his only necktie
for a yard of "shoe-string" licorice.

Miss Bailey was greatly disheartened by this reversion to the original
type. She delivered daily lectures on nail-brushes, hair-ribbons, sh