You say your grandma's dead, my lad, and you, bowed down with woe, to see her laid beneath the mold believe you ought to go; and so you ask a half day off, and you may have that same; alas, that grannies always die when there's a baseball game! Last spring, if I remember right, three grandmas died for you, and you bewailed the passing, then, of souls so warm and true; and then another grandma died--a tall and stately dame; the day they buried her there was a fourteen-inning game. And when the balmy breeze of June among the willows sighed, another grandma closed her eyes and crossed the Great Divide; they laid her gently to her rest beside the churchyard wall, the day we lammed the stuffing from the Rubes from Minnepaul. Go forth, my son, and mourn your dead, and shed the scalding tear, and lay a simple wreath upon your eighteenth grandma's bier; while you perform this solemn task I'll to the grandstand go, and watch our pennant-winning team make soupbones of the foe. _Silver Threads_ Sing a song of long ago, now the weary day is done, and the breeze is sighing low dirges for the vanished sun; sing a song of other days, ere our hearts were tired and old; sing the sweetest of old lays: "Silver Threads Among the Gold." We who feebly hold the track in the gloaming of life's day, love the songs that take us back to life's springtime, far away, when our hope had airy wing, and our hearts were strong and bold, and at eve we used to sing "Silver Threads Among the Gold." Then our hair no silver knew, and these eyes, that shrunken seem, were the brightest brown or blue, and old age was but a dream; but the years have taken flight, and life's evening bells are tolled; so, my children, sing tonight, "Silver Threads Among the Gold." _The Poet Balks_ If old Jim Riley came to town, to read a bundle of his rhyme, I guess you couldn't hold me down--I'd want to hear him every time. I wouldn't heed the tempest's shriek; I'd walk ten miles and not complain, to hear Jim Hoosier Riley speak. But I would not go round a block to see a statesman saw the air, to hear a hired spellbinder talk, like a faker at the county fair. For statesmen are as thick as fleas, and poets, they are far between; one song that lingers on the breeze is worth a million yawps, I ween. If John McCutcheon came to town, to make some pictures on the wall, I'd tear the whole blamed doorway down to be the first one in the hall; you couldn't keep me in my bed if I was dying there of croup; the push would find me at the head of the procession, with a whoop. But I won't push my fat old frame across a dozen yards of bricks, to list to men whose only fame is based on pull and politics. _The Penny Saved_