Finding all other trades deceiving, For a time I took to thieving. Now I’m a Pacific purser, And don’t think I can do any worser, Foolin’ my life away. “Yes, that’s the way,” said Jones, “that some go squandrin’, Which minds me that we too must now be wand’rin’:” “And I,” quoth Brown, “must be aboard and early; But first of all I’m going to see my girley; She’d blow a storm if I should fail to meet her: She is, I vum, an awful breezy creeter, A gale in petticoats, and one that’s stinging; I’ll sing a song on that—to end our singing. You’ve known the _girl-wind_, boys—I never doubt it; And here’s a ballad which is all about it:” THE GIRL-WIND A hurly-burly, hurl-wind Is hurrying o’er the waves; Before it runs the Girl-wind Fresh up from the Ocean caves. She’s the little puff who goes before To tell of the blow that’s coming, She sounds like a hive when winters o’er And you hear the bees a-humming. It’s all very well when a young girl can Come tripping along with laughter; But not so nice when you see the old man With a big stick coming after. It’s just the same with Everything When pleasure runs before us, You drink your wine and think it’s fine:— Then comes the tavern scoreus! So we went forth upon our different ways— And these were wide—to many a distant shore: I to my home to put in form these lays, And think upon this strange wild sailor-lore, In which, to him who reads with generous heart, As in a museum we seem to see The strangest relics gathered far apart— Rude, coarse, and rough, yet touched with poetry; Like shells and gems and coins of olden time, And worthless stones, all hardened in a mass, Such as I’ve seen, fished from the ocean’s slime, Such are these men and melodies—alas! They all are of an age half past away. Where is the boatswain now?—who hears his call? And where these sailing packets once so gay? I to myself do seem traditional And all my youth a legend—so to say— Yet well or ill I’ve done the best I could To make in truthful song a little show Of quaint old tales, now little understood, Of the North End of Boston—long ago. L A Y S O F T H E L A N D THE RISE AND FALL OF GLORYVILLE Where the rockiest Rocky Mountains interview the scornful skies, And the sager kinds of sage-bush in the middle distance rise, There the cultured eye descending from the dreamlike azure hill, Lights in an æsthetic foreground on the town of Gloryville. It was in the Middle Ages—’bout the end of Sixty-eight, So I found the hoary legend written on an ancient slate— That one Ezry Jenks prospecting, when he reached this blooming spot, Thus uplifted to his pardner: “Glory! Moses, let us squat!”