Hiram Cobb’s Hardship

“What makes you look so awful thin,

     So glum and pale an’ sore?”

Said Amos Green to Hiram Cobb,

     In Stokes’s grocery store.

“Land sakes, I’ve knowed you forty year,

     An’ I hev never seen

You look so peaked heretofore,”

     Said neighbor Amos Green.

“I s’pose I hev changed, jist a bit,”

     Said Hiram Cobb to Ame;

“But I jest want you folks to know

     It ain’t myself to blame.

I’ve got the indergestion bad,

     Can’t eat, my stummuck sore,

Jest like to die,” says Hiram Cobb,

     In Stokes’ grocery store.

“You see my wife hez gone away,

     An’ daughter, Mary Jane

Who’s teacher in a cookin’ school

     Hez come back home again.

Now Mary Jane’s all right some ways,”

     Says Hiram, rather grim,

“But theerizin’ on her pa

     Is purty hard fur him.”

July 15, 1910