it bekase dey don't get no wheat bread at
all?"
Mr. P. heard no better philosophy than this on the subject while he
remained at the White Sulphur. When he left, he brought a couple of
gallons of the water with him, and intends keeping it in the
water-cooler in his office, for loungers.
* * * * *
THE POEMS OF THE CRADLE.
CANTO III.
"JACK and GILL went up the bill
To fetch a pail of water;
JACK fell down and broke his crown,
And GILL came tumbling after."
How many persons there are who read those lines without giving one
moment's thought to their hidden beauty. Love, obedience, and devotion
unto death, are here portrayed; and yet people will repeat the lines of
the melancholy muse with a smile on their faces, and even teach it to
their young children as a sort of joyful lyric.
My own infant-mind was tampered with in the same manner; and after I had
committed the poem to memory I was proudly called up by my fond and
doting parents to display my infantile acquirements before admiring
visitors. The result might have been foreknown. All my infancy and youth
passed away, and I never once perceived the hidden worth of these lines
till I had tumbled down a hill myself, cracked my crown, and was laid up
with it a week or more. During that time I had leisure to muse on the
fate of poor JACK. When my mind expanded so as to take in all the
sublimity of his devotion and death, my heart was filled with admiration
and astonishment, and I resolved I would make one effort to rescue the
memory of poor JACK and loving GILL from the oblivion it seemed to be
falling into, in the greater admiration people gave to the musical style
of the writer.
"JACK and GILL went up the hill."
Here you see the obedient, loving, long-suffering, put-upon drudge of
his brothers and sisters-we will take the liberty of giving him a few of
each as we are a little more generous than the author--who was compelled
(not the author, but JACK,) to do all the chores, fetch and carry, 'tend
and wait, bear the heat and burden of the day, and be the JACK for all
of them. He was not dignified by the respectable title of JOHN, or
JONATHAN, but was poor simple JACK.
Virtue will always be rewarded, however, and even freckle-faced,
red-headed JACK had one friend, blue-eyed, tender-hearted GILL, who,
seeing the unhesitating obedience he rendered to all, forthwith
concluded that one so lone an
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