Fate sets a writin' in darkness and night, 'Tain't spozeable she always gits things right; To the poor she sends ten children or more Crowdin' in through Famine Wolves round the door, While for one kid the rich may vainly sigh, But she flirts her skirts and passes 'em by; Why hain't villains shot while the good go free? It wuzn't to be, it wuzn't to be. A poet comes with his dreamy way Right into a nest of common clay; And in pious home a soul gits in The size of the hole in the head of a pin; So 'tain't so strange some feller and I Should git mixed up on our way through the sky; If I had to be born why not been he. It wuzn't to be, it wuzn't to be. Fate sort o' yanked me and throwed me down On a Yankee hillside bare and brown; And gin me a chance to die or live Accordin' to labor I had to give; I couldn't eat stuns or a burdock burr, So I had to hustle and make things purr, No bread-fruit round, nor no custard-tree; No, it wuzn't to be, it wuzn't to be. Now that other feller that might have been me By a turn of Fate's pen, oh in luxury He lays and counts up his millions in bed, With his crown on the bed-post over his head; I wonder by Snum! if he thinks it straight-- For me to be small and him to be great; When I might have been him and he might have been me, But it wuzn't to be, it wuzn't to be. I'd ask how he'd like it to take off his crown And to good hard hoein' knuckle down. Or plantin', or hayin', or a weed pullin' bee In onion beds, (dum 'em from A to Z!) I bet I could work on his feelin's so deep He'd up and divide a part of his heap, Jest a thinkin' of how he might have been me-- But it wuzn't to be, it wuzn't to be. Now that feller's wife, I presoom to say That some of the time he has his way; He's so tarnal lucky and happy and fat, It would be jest like him to git even that. Oh I'd dearly love to have it to say That _once_, jest _once_ I'd had my way When Samantha and I didn't chance to agree, But it wuzn't to be, it wuzn't to be. Samantha of course had to find fault with these sad but beautiful verses. And she asked me what them letters meant I had strung along after my name, showin' plain the inherient weakness of a female's brain. Of course a man would see to once that they stood for Path Master and Salesman in the Jonesville Cheese Factory. I had talked it over with Uncle Sime and we both agreed that at this time, when the hull race of men wuz facin' complete insignificance, if not teetotal anhiliation, it behooved us to lay holt of every speck of dignity we could lay our hands on, and we both thought them letters made my name look more noble and riz up. But Samantha didn't like the verses at all, and agin advanced the uroneous idee that it wuz my liver that ailed me instead of genius.