Page 285 - 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 ...

An' thought that with a fortune I would happen roun’ some day,
A ll1 make the pillow softer fur the dear ones, gray an' oJd.

Don’t blame me if I kind o’ choke an1 words .stick in my throat;
Some folks trained to it, don’t you know, whose words arc never lame,
Can ’spress their feel in's properly an1 do it: as by wrote;
I know I’m awk’ard at it, but have feclin’s jest the same.

Ah, yonder, is the dear ole barn where many an hour I’ve played,
0, how the joy uv those bright days in memory returns!
An' there’s the brook on whose cool banks in summer time we laid,
An' same o k woods an’ hillside where we rambled through the ferns.

But tell me, where is Uncle Josh— you know he used ter live
Down yonder— there, T see the roof jest peepin’ through the trees—
W hat! he, too, gone? And all are gone? No other news to give?
While grass upon their mildewed graves is wavin’ in the breeze ?

1 see the orchard where we planted trees when I was young,
But these can’t be the trees, though perhaps they've grown so ta ll;
A n ’ pretty birds— where are they all that in the branches sung,
A n’ those tame squirrels that would come if once they heard my call?

A drink uv water? Yes, my throat is blisterin’ an’ dry—
All, that’s the same— God brews it— an; it is the same ole w ell;
Hark ! from the village yonder there's a soun' a-floatin’ by—
I heard it forty years ago— yes, ’tis the same old bell,
Kind o’ silent like wus Sunday mornin’ ah the eountiy roun',
No mowers in the meadows an' no hand upon the plough,
A n 1 the hills an’ valleys waited jest to hear that ole bell soun’,
But the people that it called to church— I guess they’re not there now.

W a’al, yes, my life's been rough, I know— I’ve had my ups and downs,
Hev seen the wust uv ev’ry thing, niisfortun's been my lot,
The world has had some smiles fur me, but fewer than the frowns ;
Yet where I played in boyhood— O, I've aller.s loved the spot