Frankie went down to the corner, To buy herself some near beer, Says to the handsome bartender, Has my loving man been here? =He is my man= =But he is doing me wrong.= I ain’t going to tell you no story, Ain’t going to tell you no lies, Johnnie left here an hour ago With a party called Nellie Bly, =He is your husband,= =But he is doing you wrong.= Frankie went back to the Bly house, Didn’t go back there for fun, Underneath her red kimona, She carried a 44 gun. =She’s after the man= =That was doing her wrong.= Frankie knocked on the door, Frankie pushed on the bell, Open that door you “crooked girl” Or I’ll blow you clear to—well, =You’ve got my man,= =That’s doing me wrong.= Thirteen girls dressed in mourning, Thirteen men dressed in black, They all went out to the cemetery, But only twelve of the men came back, =They left her man,= =That had done her wrong.= * * * * * There was a young lady of Skye, With a shape like a capital I. She said “It’s too bad! But then I can pad”— Which shows you figures can lie. * * * * * The Lure of the Tropics You’ve decided to come to the tropics, Heard all that you had to do Was sit in the shade of a cocoanut glade While dollars rolled in to you. You got that stuff down at the bureau; You’ve got your statistics straight? Well, hear what it did to another kid Before you decide your fate. You don’t go down with a sharp hard fall, You just sort of shuffle along And lighten your load of the moral code Till you don’t know right from the wrong. I started in to be honest, With everything on the square, But a man can’t fool with the golden rule In a crowd that wont play fair. ’Twas a case of riding a crooked race, Or being an “also ran”; My only hope was to sneak and dope The horse of the other man. I pulled a deal in Guayaquil, In an Inca silver mine; And before they found ’twas salted ground, I was safe in the Argentine. Where I made short weight on the River Platte; I was running a freighter there. And I cracked a crib on a rich estate, Without even turning a hair. But the thing that’ll double bar my soul, When it flaps at heaven’s doors, Was peddling booze to the Santa Cruz And Winchester forty-fours. Made unafraid by my hellish aid, The drink crazed brutes came down And left a blazing, quivering mass Of a flourishing border town. I then took charge of a smuggler’s barge, Down the coast from Yucatan! But she went to hell off Cristobal One night in a hurricane. I got to shore on a broken oar, In the filthy shrieking dark, While the other two of the good ship’s crew Were converted into shark.