we owe,--
Mother's whippings didn't count; father's did, though!

We used to sneak off swimmin' in those careless, boyish days,
And come back home of evenings with our necks and backs ablaze;
How mother used to wonder why our clothes were full of sand,--
But father, having been a boy, appeared to understand;
And after tea he'd beckon us to join him in the shed,
Where he'd proceed to tinge our backs a deeper, darker red.
Say what we will of mother's, there is none will controvert
The proposition that our father's lickings always hurt!

For mother was by nature so forgiving and so mild
That she inclined to spare the rod although she spoiled the child;
And when at last in self-defence she had to whip us, she
Appeared to feel those whippings a great deal more than we:
But how we bellowed and took on, as if we'd like to die,--
Poor mother really thought she hurt, and that's what made _her_ cry!
Then how we youngsters snickered as out the door we slid,
For mother's whippings never hurt, though father's always did!

In after years poor father simmered down to five feet four,
But in our youth he seemed to us in height eight feet or more!
Oh, how we shivered when he quoth in cold, suggestive tone:
"I'll see you in the woodshed after supper all alone!"
Oh, how the legs and arms and dust and trouser-buttons flew,--
What florid vocalisms marked that vesper interview!
Yes, after all this lapse of years, I feelingly assert,
With all respect to mother, it was father's whippings hurt!

The little boy experiencing that tingling 'neath his vest
Is often loath to realize that all is for the best;
Yet, when the boy gets older, he pictures with delight
The bufferings of childhood,--as we do here to-night.
The years, the gracious years, have smoothed and beautified the ways
That to our little feet seemed all too rugged in the days
Before you went to selling clothes and I to peddling rhymes,--
So, Harvey, let us sit awhile and think upon those times.

BION'S SONG OF EROS.

EROS is the god of love;
He and I are hand-in-glove.
All the gentle, gracious Muses
Follow Eros where he leads,
And they bless the bard who chooses
To proclaim love's famous deeds;
Him they serve in rapturous glee,--
That is why they're good to me.

Sometimes I have gone astray