DSOE[7]

JOHN HAY

Wall, no! I can't tell where he lives,
Because he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three years,
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludsoe passed in his checks,
The night of the Prairie Belle?

He warn't no saint--them engineers
Is all pretty much alike--
One wife in Natchez-Under-the-Hill,
And another one here in Pike.
A careless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward man in a row--
But he never flunked, and he never lied--
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had--
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire;
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip',
And her day came at last--
The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle, she wouldn't be passed,
And so came a-tearin' along that night,
The oldest craft on the line,
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnaces crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire burst out as she cleared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned and made
For that willer-bank on the right.
Ther' was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out
Over all the infernal roar,
"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot's ashore."

Thro' the hot black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludsoe's voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And know'd he would keep his word.
And sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,
And Bludsoe's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of Prairie Belle.

He warn't no saint--but at judgment
I'd run my chance with Jim
Longside of some pious gentleman
That wouldn't shook hands with him.
He'd seen his duty, a dead sure thing,
And went fer it thar and then;
And Christ ain't a-goin' to be too hard
On a man that died for men.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] By permission of Mrs. Hay.

KING ROBERT OF SICILY[8]

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW