Page 212 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

You've heard of the Royal Helen, the ship ns was wrecked last year?
Yon be ths rack she struck on—-the: boat its went out ho here;
The night as she struck was reckoned the worst, as ever we had,
And this 'is a coast in winter where the weather be awful bad.
The beach here was strewed with wreckage, and to tell you the truth,
sir, then
Was the only time as ever we’d a bother to get the men.
The single chaps was willin', and six: on ’em volunteered,
Unt most on us here is married, ami (he wives that night was skcored.

Our women ain't chicken-hearted when it conics to savin' lives,
Hut death that night looked certain— and our wives be only wives;
Their lot ain’t bright at the best, fir ; but here, when the man lies dead,
Tain’i only a husband miasm1, it's the children's daily bread;
So our women began to whimper and beg o’ the chaps to stay—
T only heard oil it. after, for that night I was kept away.
1 was up at my cottage, yonder, where the wife lay nigh her end,
She’d been ailin' all the winter, and nothin’ ’ud make her mend.

The doctor had given her up, sir. and J knelt by her side and prayed,
With my eyes as red as a babbv’s, that Death's hand might yet bo
stayed.
I hcered the wild wind howlin', and I looked on the wasted form
And thought of the awful shipwreck as had come in the rawin’ storrn;
The wreck of my little homestead— the wreck of my dear old wife,
Who’d sailed with me fi>r[.y years, sir, o'er the troublous waves of life,
And T looked at the eyes so sunken, as had been my harbor lights,
To tell of the sweet home haven in the wildest, darkest nights.

She knew she was sin kill’ quickly— she knew as her end was nigh,
But she never spoke o’ the troubles as 1 knew on her heart must lie,
For we’d had one great big sorrow with Jack, our only son—
He’d got into trouble in London, as lots o’ the lads ha' done ;
Then he’d bolted, his masters told us— he was alius what folk
call wild >