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

3o6 ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
Egyptian Salve, Egyptian Salve,
A stick the people all should have.
A strengthening plaster well applied
Will cure a pain in back or side!
So much for the "Watkins Way."
Joseph II writes of his father, B. U. Watkins:
My father was a preacher bold,
Down by the shady Mill Creek;
In Latin and Greek the old story he told,
Down by the shady Mill Creek.
He preached without pay and he paid without kick,
To fix up the church so stylish and sleek,
Down by the shady Mill Creek.
It seems there was a donation party on one occasion for
Benjamin U. Watkins, and along with rabbit pie, fried cakes,
and other eatables came a pair of mittens made from the skin
of a black cat, helped out with buffalo hide. Again son-in-law
Datus bloomed out into poetry, immortalizing the donated
mittens in the following couplet:
Cat skin and buffalo make a mighty mitten.
Wasn't it a lucky day for dad when they killed the kitten?
Family Repartee
Brother William stood before the glass, combing his abundant
ringlets and at the same time reciting:
"Rising curl upon curl in promiscuous confusion —
"Yes," broke in Ju Ann, recalling her geography lesson,
"surrounded by shallow and tempestuous seas, the navigation
of which is exceedingly dangerous!"
Out of His Mouth
An old Scotchman was obliged to preach for a living, and
he worked up a very fine discourse for his audience out of the
story of Jonah and the whale. In order to more powerfully
impress the tale upon the minds of his innocent hearers, he
reiterated and emphasized the points of the story.
He began one epoch in his discourse with the query,