Wrong in His Head

Ame Green he sat nightly in Stokes’s store,

     Discussing the news o’ the day;

But more partic’lar to criticize

     The fellows who’d gone away.

“There was Efram Blodgett,” ol’ Amos would say,

     “A smart enough boy, they all said,”

But all he would do wuz to study an’ draw,

     A little bit wrong on the head.

“An’ Amasa Wheeler, another green lad,

     Frum the time he got out uv his bed

Wuz makin’ inventions, an’ that sort o’ truck,

     A little bit wrong in the head.

An’ Jonathan Perkins, the wust uv ‘em all,

     Wrote poems an’ stories they said;

He never wuz wuth the room he took up,

     A little bit wrong on his head.

“An’ then there wuz ‘Tooter’, Jim Willerby’s boy,

     All he wanted to do wuz to play

On his ol’ tutin’ horn, he skipped frum his home

     When Jim took his cornet away.

These fellers they might hev been somethin’ today

     Ef they’d stayed an’ a farmer’s life led;

But you can’t expect much uv a feller, I say,

     Ef he’s a leetle bit wrong in the head.”

Now Blodgett’s an artist of far-reaching fame,

     And Wheeler’s inventions we know;

And Perkins and “Tooter” have won fame and wealth

     In the paths that they chose long ago.

I have noticed the fellows who’ve prodded the world,

     Who in all the great movements have led

Are the men who fellows like Ame criticize,

     A little bit wrong in the head.

Nov. 24, 1910