Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

TALES OF THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN 305
him till he was done strutting and fussing and cooing; and
then she took her part, and began berating and scolding him
in a tongue imknown to me — she flouted him, turned her back
upon hmi and walked away from him. Whereupon he arose
upon indignant pinions and whir-r-r! he flew to afar distance,
probably telling her there were better-looking hens than she
all over the prairie, and right where he was going in particular.
And then what lonely grieving and wailing came from that
little prairie hen, away off" there by her poor lonesome self!
Moral: All nature, one nature; all life, one life; all love,
one love.
Davy Robinson
I knew a man with a large family, who lived by his daily
labor; he was always light-hearted, and never complained of
trouble or hard times. When asked how he was getting on
and how he lived, he would reply, "On short cake, but the only
trouble is that the cake is too short for me to get a hand on it."
He would generally add, "and for variety we sometimes have
a leg o' nothing and no turnips." It was something to watch
Davy eat one of mother's boiled dinners, the slices of pork and
real cabbage proving better by far than the famous repast of
"Leg o' nothing and no turnips."
"You're What Jim Wrote!"
Jim Lane, the hired man, became mad at a neighbor and
wrote him an abusive letter, calling him hard names, such as
"devil." Mother had taught us this was wrong, and one day,
when being tormented by his brother, in a fit of great exasperation
little Joe said to Will: "You're what Jim wrote!"
Poetical Gifts
Our father was something of a poet; he loved Minnesota
and wrote "Autumnal Days" in that state.
Autumnal days, autumnal days,
There's beauty in thy mist and haze —
Datus Myers, his son-in-law, parodied this in a manner to
advertise the celebrated Egyptian Salve: