ssh! ssh! for the big eyes gleaming,
Dee, dee, softly his mother sings;
Little boy dreaming, dreaming, dreaming,
Fluttering to bye-low on bull-fly wings.

BARTER

Kiddies must have little shoes
Softly buckled round their toes,
Rompers wrought in butcher blues,
That's the way the money goes.

In the Summer silky cool
Fabrics foaming in the breeze;
In the Winter muffling wool--
We must buy our kiddies these.

Woolly gaiters, tasselled hoods,
Mantles soft that flow and fall,
All the very best of foods,
All the very best of all.

Babies must have songs for sleep,
Anxious watchings night and day,
Kisses if they laugh or weep,
So the ripe hours rush away.

And for this we pay (it seems
We may not serve visions, too)
With our high neglected dreams,
With great things we meant to do.

FATHER SONG

They mean such a wonderful lot to me,
It's quite absurd how my soul is smitten
With Padie, who's four, and Bay, who's three,
And Sufi, a Persian kitten!

So mother must worry, and father must fuss,
But I'll fake these songs to a sadder version
When manhood steals the boys from us,
And the Bottle-o pinches the Persian!

SUNDAY DINNER

The butcher comed and he bringed no meat,
But he crawled in the poultry pen,
And he putted his hand among they feet,
And catched the father hen.

He catched it as hard as anything,
But it didn't once crowed at all,
And he tied its feet with a bundle of string
And hanged it up on the wall.

And now and again its wings went flap,
But that didn't frighten me!
I runned for my little brother chap
To come outside and see.

The father hen's not crowing now,
The ittooest ittoo bit;
We're going to tell our father how
The butcher's hurted it!

Our father has mended the bathroom door
And the leg of the rocking chair:
He mended the fence long time before,
And he bought my horse some hair.

He made the bikes so they wouldn't squeal,
And he made the bunny to talk;
He hammered some tacks in the engine wheel
When the engine couldn't walk.

And he cured the teddy when it was dead,
And he mended the barrow for me--
So father will mend the rooster's head
Before he haves hi