the morrow came around, they placed him gently in a box; at break of morning he was found as dead as Julius Caesar's ox. His widow now is scrubbing floors, and washing shirts, and splitting wood, and doing fifty other chores, that she may rear her wailing brood. "Tomorrow," said the careless jay, "I'll take an hour, and make my will; and then if I should pass away, the wife and kids will know no ill." The morrow came, serene and nice, the weather mild, with signs of rain; the careless jay was placed on ice, embalming fluid in his brain. Alas, alas, poor careless jay! The lawyers got his pile of cash; his wife is toiling night and day, to keep the kids in clothes and hash. Tomorrow is the ambushed walk avoided by the circumspect. Tomorrow is the fatal rock on which a million ships are wrecked. [Pg 91] [Pg 91] Toothache Now my weary heart is breaking, for my left hand tooth is aching, with a harsh, persistent rumble that is keeping folks awake; hollowed out by long erosion, it, with spasm and explosion, seems resolved to show the public how a dog-gone tooth can ache. Now it's quivering or quaking; now it's doing fancy aching, then it shoots some Roman candles which go whizzing through my brain; now it does some lofty tumbling, then again it's merely grumbling; and anon it's showing samples of spring novelties in pain. All the time my woe increases; I have kicked a chair to pieces, but it didn't seem to soothe me or to bring my soul relief; I have stormed around the shanty till my wife and maiden auntie said they'd pull their freight and leave me full enjoyment of my grief. I have made myself so pleasant that I'm quarantined at present, and the neighbors say they'll shoot me if I venture from my door; now a voice cries: "If thou'd wentest in the first place, to a dentist—" it is strange that inspiration never came to me before! [Pg 92] [Pg 92] Auf Wiedersehen "Farewell," I said, to the friend I loved, and my eyes were filled with tears; "I know you'll come to my heart again, in a few brief, hurried years!" Ah, many come up the garden path, and knock at my cottage door, but the friend I loved when my heart was young, comes back to that heart no more. "Farewell!" I cried to the gentle bird, whose music had filled the dawn; "you fly away, but you'll sing again, when the winter's snows are gone." Ah, the bright birds sway on the apple-boughs, and sing as they sang before; but
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