“Like Mother Used To Make”

He sat around the shady door

     When summer days were long;

Inside his wife worked all the day

     Too tired for talk or song.

In winter time around the stove

     He’d sit all day and bake,

Complaining that her food was not

     Like mother used to make.

Did she produce a pumpkin pie,

     A pudding or a cake,

He’d growl, and say ‘twas not as good

     As mother used to make.

And she, poor woman, kept her peace

     Till she could stand no more;

One day she faced him,

     And asked him o’er and o’er.

She pointed at the bushy fields,

     And said, with fearless brow:

“Thet land is not as good as ‘twas

     When father used to plough.

Thet wood pile, only so in name,

     With scarce enough to bake,

Is not the kind, you lazy chump,

     Your father used to make!”

“This wood-box here behind the stove

     Just gives my heart a chill;

It isn’t anything at all

     Like father used to fill.

The paths around the house are not

     Fit walking for a pig;

They do not look at all the same

     As father used to dig.”

She tried to say some more, but he

     Had seized his old felt hat

And headed for the village store

     To have a little chat.

I don’t know if he tills the soil,

     Or cuts the wood to bake

But he has stopped his old complaint:

     “Like mother used to make”!

Nov. 4, ‘10