?
A pig upon a pedestal,
A cabbage up a tree,
A rabbit cutting capers
With a twenty dollar bill--
Now if I don't get to Tattletown
Then no one ever will.

POLLY AND PETER

Polly had some china cows
And Peter had a gun.
She turned the bossies out to browse,
And Peterkin, for fun,
Just peppered them with butter beans
And blew them all to smithereens.

* * *

Now what will pretty Polly do
For milk and cream and butter too?

I WENT TO TOWN ON MONDAY

I went to town on Monday
To buy myself a coat,
But on the way I met a man
Who traveled with a caravan,
And bought a billy-goat.

I went to town on Tuesday
And bought a fancy vest.
I kept the pretty bucklestraps,
Buttonholes and pocketflaps,
And threw away the rest.

[Illustration]

I went to town on Thursday
To buy a loaf of bread,
But when I got there, goodness sakes!
The town was full of rattlesnakes--
The bakers all were dead.

[Illustration]

I went to town on Saturday
To get myself a wife,
But when I saw the lady fair
I gnashed my teeth and pulled my hair
And scampered for my life.

[Illustration]

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

Where are you going, sister Kate?
I'm going to swing on the garden gate,
And watch the fairy gypsies dance
Their tim-tam-tum on the cabbage-plants--
The great big one with the purple nose,
And the tiny tad with the pinky toes.

Where are you going, brother Ben?
I'm going to build a tiger-pen.
I'll get iron and steel and 'lectric wire
And build it a hundred feet, or higher,
And put ten tigers in it too,
And a big wildcat, and--mebbe--you.

[Illustration]

Where are you going, mother mine?
I'm going to sit by the old grapevine,
And watch the gliding swallow bring
Clay for her nest from the meadow spring--
Clay and straw and a bit of thread
To weave it into a baby's bed.

[Illustration]

Where are you going, grandma dear?
I'm going, love, where the skies are clear,
And the light winds lift the poppy flowers
And gather clouds for the summer showers,
Where the old folks and the children play
On the warm hillside through the livelong day.

CHRISTOPHER CRUMP

Christopher Crump,
All in a lump,
Sits like a toad on the top of a stump.
He stretches and sighs,
And blinks with his eyes,
Bats at the beetles and fights