I give my TREASURES to her--all,--my pencil--blue-and-red;-- And, if little girls played marbles, MINE should all be HERS, instead! But SHE gave me her PHOTOGRAPH, and printed "Ever Thine" Across the back--in blue-and-red--that old sweet-heart of mine! And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand, As we used to talk together of the future we had planned,-- When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do But write the tender verses that she set the music to . . . When we should live together in a cozy little cot Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot, Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine, And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine. When I should be her lover forever and a day, And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray; And we should be so happy that when either's lips were dumb They would not smile in Heaven till the other's kiss had come. But, ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair, And the door is softly opened, and--my wife is standing there: Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I resign,-- To greet the LIVING presence of that old sweetheart of mine. SQUIRE HAWKINS'S STORY I hain't no hand at tellin' tales, Er spinnin' yarns, as the sailors say; Someway o' 'nother, language fails To slide fer me in the oily way That LAWYERS has; and I wisht it would, Fer I've got somepin' that I call good; But bein' only a country squire, I've learned to listen and admire, Ruther preferrin' to be addressed Than talk myse'f--but I'll do my best:-- Old Jeff Thompson--well, I'll say, Was the clos'test man I ever saw!-- Rich as cream, but the porest pay, And the meanest man to work fer--La! I've knowed that man to work one "hand"-- Fer little er nothin', you understand-- From four o'clock in the morning light Tel eight and nine o'clock at night, And then find fault with his appetite! He'd drive all over the neighberhood To miss the place where a toll-gate stood, And slip in town, by some old road That no two men in the county knowed, With a jag o' wood, and a sack o' wheat, That wouldn't burn and you couldn't eat! And the trades he'd make, 'll I jest de-clare, Was enough to make a preacher swear! And then he'd hitch, and hang about Tel the lights in the toll-gate was blowed out, And then the turnpike he'd turn in And sneak his way back home ag'in! Some folks hint, and I make no doubt, That that's what wore his old wife out-- Toilin' away from day to day And year to year, through heat and cold, Uncomplainin'--the same old way The martyrs died in the days of old; And a-clingin', too, as the martyrs done, To one fixed faith, and her ONLY one,-- Little Patience, the sweetest child That ever wept unrickonciled, Er felt the pain and the ache and sting That only a mother's death can bring.