Roosevelt and the Farm

                              (President Roosevelt is reported to be worth $500,000.)

Now I have worked upon this farm for forty years or more

Worked hard from morn till night to keep the wolf beyond the door;

I’ve raked an’ scraped an’ hoed an’ dug as long as I could see

An’ here I am at sixty – five without a su-markee.

I’ve raised a fair sized family, and give ‘em learnin’, too,

An’ they have gone off to the towns as children allus do,

An’ ma an’ me are here alone, with jest the farm to show,

Exactly where we started some forty years ago.

Now here is this man Roosevelt, no smarter man than me,

Picked up an’ hustled here an’ there, a man of destiny;

A man of fate, who’s swept along by unseen forces great

Until he’s landed high and dry upon the Ship of State.

A few short years of public life, an’ if reports are true,

Five hundred thousand in the bank an’ more within his view.

Five hundred thousand dollars, sir, an’ hands as white as snow,

While mine have grown as hard as stone sence forty years ago.

My father dinged it in my ears that farmin’ it would pay,

I’d better stay upon the farm or I would rue the day;

The world outside had fools enough a-chasin’ after fame,

I’d better keep the farmin’ up – also the fam’ly name.

Now I have stuck upon the farm an’ I am stuck for fair,

While Roosevelt has landed in the Presidential chair.

An’ he is rich an’ I am poor, but I can’t hardly see

Sence I have worked so mighty hard an’ I am smart as he.

July 2, ‘07

su markee. (French, sou marqué.) Used in the sea-port towns of New England and in New York. Ex. 'I would not give a soo markée for it,' i. e. a single cent. Dictionary of Americanisms, by John Russell Bartlett (1848)