Sneer as you may, _I'm_ proud to say That I, for one, am very grateful To Heaven, that sends These genial friends To banish other friendships hateful! And when I'm done, I'd have no son Pounce on these treasures like a vulture; Nay, give them half My epitaph, And let them share in my sepulture. Then, when the crack Of doom rolls back The marble and the earth that hide me, I'll smuggle home Each precious tome, Without a fear my wife shall chide me! OUR LADY OF THE MINE The Blue Horizon wuz a mine us fellers all thought well uv, And there befell the episode I now perpose to tell uv; 'T wuz in the year uv sixty-nine,--somewhere along in summer,-- There hove in sight one afternoon a new and curious comer; His name wuz Silas Pettibone,--a' artist by perfession,-- With a kit of tools and a big mustache and a pipe in his possession. He told us, by our leave, he 'd kind uv like to make some sketches Uv the snowy peaks, 'nd the foamin' crick, 'nd the distant mountain stretches; "You're welkim, sir," sez we, although this scenery dodge seemed to us A waste uv time where scenery wuz already sooper-_floo_-us. All through the summer Pettibone kep' busy at his sketchin',-- At daybreak off for Eagle Pass, and home at nightfall, fetchin' That everlastin' book uv his with spider-lines all through it; Three-Fingered Hoover used to say there warn't no meanin' to it. "Gol durn a man," sez he to him, "whose shif'less hand is sot at A-drawin' hills that's full uv quartz that's pinin' to be got at!" "Go on," sez Pettibone, "go on, if joshin' gratifies ye; But one uv these fine times I'll show ye sumthin' will surprise ye!" The which remark led us to think--although he didn't say it-- That Pettibone wuz owin' us a gredge 'nd meant to pay it. One evenin' as we sat around the Restauraw de Casey, A-singin' songs 'nd tellin' yarns the which wuz sumwhat racy, In come that feller Pettibone, 'nd sez, "With your permission, I'd like to put a picture I have made on exhibition." He sot the picture on the bar 'nd drew aside its curtain, Sayin', "I reckon you'll allow as how _that's_ art, f'r certain!" And then we looked, with jaws agape, but nary word wuz spoken, And f'r a likely spell the charm uv silence wuz unbroken-- Till presently, as in a dream, remarked Three-Fingered Hoover: "Onless I am mistaken, this is Pettibone's shef doover!"