They turned to the north, and by this detour
The British were left in the lurch. Quite sure
Am I that no happier girl than she
Who rode by the side of Lieutenant Lee
Could be found in all the land that day.
Ere night in Marblehead safe were they.
The story of Ruth and her long night ride
Spread through the village and country side,
And they came in crowds, it is said, to pay
Respect to her, and "Well done" to say.
"I don't care so much for their praise," said she,
As she smiled in the face of Lieutenant Lee,
"As I do to know that I helped you play
A trick on the British, and won the day."
PATRICK DOLIN'S LOVE-LETTER.
IT'S Patrick Dolin meself and no other,
That's after informin' you without any bother,
That your own darling self put me heart in a blaze,
And made me your sweetheart the rest of my days,
So now I sits down to write ye this letter,
To tell how I loves ye, as none can love better.
Mony's the day sure since first I got smitten
With your own purty face that's as bright as a kitten's,
And yer illigant figger, that's just the right size.
Faith, I'm all over in love wid ye, clear up to the eyes,
And if these feelin's you'll only reciprocate,
I gives ye my hand and heart, everything but me hate.
Och, now while I write, me heart's in a flutter,
For I can't help feelin' every word that I utter;
You'll think me deceivin', or tellin' a lie,
If I tell who's in love wid me, just ready to die;
There's Bridget McCregan, full of coketish tricks,
Keeps flatterin' me pride to get me heart in a fix;
And Bridget, ye know, has great expectations,
From the father that's dead, and lots of relations;
PATRICK DOLIN'S LOVE-LETTER.
Then there's Biddy O'Farrel, the cunningest elf,
Sings "Patrick me darling," and that manes meself;
I might marry them both if I felt so inclined,
But there's no use talking of the likes of their kind:
I trates them alike without any imparshality,
And maintain meself on the ground of neutrality,
For the same I've got meself in a quonderum,
For they keep tazing and tazing, to make me fond of them;
But the more they taze me, the greater the dislike,
And it's sick that I am with their blathering sight.
If there's any truth in dreams, we'd been one long ago,
For I keep dreaming every night, I am lovin' ye so.
By the holy St. Patrick, I loves ye and no other,
And for the likes of ye forsake father and mother.
On me knees, Helen darling, I ask yer consent,
For better or worse, without a rid cent;
If ye refuse me, bedad, I'm like to go crazy,
And cut me throat with a razor to make me soul aisy.
I'm a Catholic, ye know, but for the sake of relation,
Wouldn't mind to change creed and sign a recantation.
I'd do anything in the world, anything ye would say,
If ye'd be Mistress Dolin instead of Miss Day,
I'd save all me money, and buy a new coat,
And go to New Orleans by the steam packet-boat;
I'd buy a half acre and build a nice house,
Where nothing would taze us, so much as a mouse;
And you'll hear nothing else, from year out to year in,
But sweet words of kindness from yer Patrick Dolin.
As to the matter of property, Helen me honey,
I've great expectations, but not a ha'p'orth of money;
Me father's a merchant who keeps a great store,
"WARM MEALS FOR A QUARTHER" is the sign on the
And there he sells lickers, and all sorts of trash
That beats all the stores for bringing in cash;
But better than all is me kind-hearted ould aunty
That lives in the patch in her nate little shanty,
For oft have I dreamed me ould aunty had died
And left me her shanty, with a trifle beside.
'Tis meself that would say, predicting no wrong,
That aunty must die some time before very long,
And every morning I'm waking, 'tis expecting to find
That the spirit has left aunty and shanty behind;
Then there on the patch would we live, Helen darlin',
With never a hard word, bickering or quarrellin';
But if ye should die-forgive me the thought,
I'd behave meself as a dacent man ought;
I'd spend all me days in wailing and crying,
And wish for nothing better than just to be dying.
You'd see on marble slabs, reared up side by side,
"Here lies Patrick Dolin." "Here lies Helen his bride."
Yer indulgence in conclusion on my letter I ask,
For to write a love-letter is no aisy task;
I've an impediment of speech, as me letter all shows,
And a cold in me head that makes me write through me nose.
Please write me a letter, to me great-uncle's care,
With the prescription upon it, "Patrick Dolin, Esquire,
In haste," write in big letters on the outside of the cover,
And believe me, forever, yer distractionate lover.
Written with me own hand.
D. R. LOCKE (PETROLEUM V. NASBY.)
SHE isn't half so handsome as when, twenty years agone,
At her old home in Piketon, Parson Avery made us one;
The great house crowded full of guests of every degree,
The girls all envying Hannah Jane, the boys all envying me.
Her fingers then were taper, and her skin as white as milk,
Her brown hair, what a mass it was! and soft and fine as silk;
No wind-moved willow by a brook had ever such a grace,
Her form of Aphrodite, with a pure Madonna face.
She had but meagre schooling; her little notes to me
Were full of little pot-hooks, and the worst orthography;
Her "dear" she spelled with double e, and "kiss" with but one s;
But when one's crazed with passion what's a letter more or less?
She blundered in her writing, and she blundered when she spoke,
And every rule of syntax, that old Murray made, she broke;
But she was beautiful and fresh, and I-well, I was young;
Her form and face o'erbalanced all the blunders of her tongue.
I was but little better. True, I'd longer been at school;
My tongue and pen were run, perhaps, a little more by rule;
But that was all, the neighbors round who both of us well knew,
Said, which I believed-she was the better of the two.
All's changed; the light of seventeen's no longer in her eyes;
Her wavy hair is gone-that loss the coiffeur's art supplies;
Her form is thin and angular, she slightly forward bends;
Her fingers, once so shapely, now are stumpy at the ends.
She knows but very little, and in little are we one;
The beauty rare, that more than hid that great defect, is gone.
My parvenu relations now deride my homely wife,
And pity me that I am tied to such a clod for life.
I know there is a difference; at reception and levee
The brightest, wittiest, and most famed of women smile on me; And everywhere I hold my place among the greatest men;
And sometimes sigh, with Whittier's judge, "Alas! it might have been."
When they all crowd around me, stately dames and brilliant belles, And yield to me the homage that all great success compels, Discussing art and statecraft, and literature as well,
From Homer down to Thackeray, and Swedenborg on "hell,"
I can't forget that from these streams my wife has never quaffed,
Has never with Ophelia wept, nor with Jack Falstaff laughed;
Of authors, actors, artists-why, she hardly knows the names,
She slept while I was speaking on the Alabama claims.
I can't forget just at this point another form appears—
The wife I wedded as she was before my prosperous years;
I travel o'er the dreary road we travelled side by side,
And wonder what my share would be if Justice should divide!
She had four hundred dollars left her from the old estate;
On that we married, and, thus poorly armored, faced our fate.
I wrestled with my books; her task was harder far than mine,—
'Twas how to make two hundred dollars do the work of nine.
At last I was admitted, then I had my legal lore,
An office with a stove and desk, of books perhaps a score;
She had her beauty and her youth, and some housewifely skill;
And love for me and faith in me, and back of that a will.
I had no friends behind me-no influence to aid;
I worked and fought for every little inch of ground I made.
And how she fought beside me! never woman lived on less;
In two long years she never spent a single cent for dress.
Ah! how she cried for joy when my first legal fight was won,
When our eclipse passed partly by and we stood in the sun;
The fee was fifty dollars-'twas the work of half a year—
First captive, lean and scraggy, of my legal bow and spear.
I well remember when my coat (the only one I had),
Was seedy grown and threadbare, and in fact, most "shocking bad,"
The tailor's stern remark when I a modest order made:
"Cash is the basis, sir, on which we tailors do our trade!
Her winter cloak was in his shop by noon that very day;
She wrought on hickory shirts at night that tailor's skill to pay;
I got a coat, and wore it; but alas, poor Hannah Jane
Ne'er went to church or lecture till warm weather came again.
Our second season she refused a cloak of any sort,
That I might have a decent suit in which t' appear in court;
She made her last year's bonnet do, that I might have a hat;
Talk of the old-time flame-enveloped martyrs after that!
No negro ever worked so hard, a servant's pay to save,
She made herself most willingly a household drudge and slave.
What wonder that she never read a magazine or book,
Combining as she did in one, nurse, housemaid, seamstress, cook!
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