A Poet Jes’ Like You

                                                     To Nixon Waterman

I’ve read “A Book of Verses”, sir,

      Read every blessed line;

An’ want to say in my poor way,

      I thought it very fine.

An' you had orter feel jes’ proud,

      Ez I presume you do;

An' ez for me, I’d like to be

      A poet jes’ like you.

                                                                                           Joe Cone

April 27, 1900

Nixon Waterman (12 November 1859, Newark, Kendall County, Illinois - 1 September 1944, Canton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts) was a newspaper writer, poet and Chautauqua lecturer, who rose to prominence in the 1890s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Waterman

c. 1937 (age 78)

"A house is built of bricks and stones, of sills and posts and piers;

But a home is built of loving deeds that stand a thousand years."

“Though life is made up of mere bubbles

'Tis better than many have,

For while we've a whole lot of troubles

The most of them never occur.”

~Nixon Waterman