If there had been any way of disappearing I should have
faded away instantly, but alas, every avenue of escape was closed, and
before I left the room each separate and distinct ancestor had turned
me over his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of
all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to
take me out of the lists of Parnassus forever, it on the contrary
served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until
now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets,
triolets, rondeaux and lyrics of one kind or another.

One little piece that I recall had to do with the frequency with which
I was punished for small delinquencies. It was called

WHEN FATHER SPANKED ME

My Father larruped me, and yet
I could but note his eyes were wet,
When lying there across his knee
I got what he had had for me--
It seemed to fill him with regret.

"It hurt me worse than you," he said,
When later on I went to bed,
And I--the truth would not be hid--
Replied, "I'm gug-gug-glad it did!"

There were other verses written as I grew older that, while I do not
regard them as masterpieces, I nevertheless think compare favorably
with a great deal of the alleged poetry that has crept into print of
late years. A trifle dashed off on a brick with a piece of charcoal
one morning shortly after my hundredth birthday, comes back to me. The
original I regret to say was lost through the careless act of one of
my cousins, who flung it at a pterodactyl as it winged its flight
across our meadows some years after. I reproduce it from memory.

THE JUNE-BUG

The merry, merry June-bug
Now butts at all in sight.
He butts the wall o' mornings,
He rams the ceil at night.

He caroms from the book-case
Off to the window-pane,
Then bounces from my table
Back to the case again.

He whacks against the door-jamb
And tumbles on the mat;
Then on the grand-piano
He strikes a strident flat;

Then to the oaken stair-case
He blindly flops and jumps,
And on the steps for hours
He blithely bumps the bumps.

They say that he is foolish,
And has no brains. No doubt
'Tis well for if he had 'em
He'd surely butt them out.

As I say, this is mere a trifle, but it is none the less beautifully
descriptive of a creature that has always seemed to me to be wort