In Stokes’s Grocery Store

The winter winds are blowin’ cold

     An’ there is snow squalls in the air;

Jack Frost at last hez got a hold,

     An’ he is holdin’ on fur fair.

But there is one place snug an’ warm

     Where winter winds don’t howl an’ roar;

One place we dodge the cold an’ storm

     An’ thet is Stokes’s grocery store.

There is a place uv joy an’ rest

     A home-like harbor free frum care;

An’ ev’ry evenin’ Gungy’s best,

     In all its glory gathers there.

There is a haven free frum toil

     A place where sorrer dwells no more;

Where we don’t have to work the soil,

     An’ that I Stokes’s grocery store.

c. Nov. 10, 1910

(The handwritten original has a mark indicating an intended paragraph break after the second stanza and no signature, with the rest of the page having been left blank, so it appears as if he originally felt it to not have been completed. It was published in Jocosities in this form, however, on November 18, 1910. That’s more of a delay than was typical, so he may well have been undecided at first?)