He’d reely died two years before, but hadn’t let folks know,
Because these undertakin’ chaps tuck on ex- penses so.
Perk Todd was tellin’ down t’ the store he had a dream las’ week--
He dreamed he got in Paradise! Must been a denied close’ squeak!
Wal, Perk he says an angel there was showin’ him around,
“At last,” says Perk, “I ups an’ asks how ’twas I hadn’t found
No people there from where I’d lived. The angel says, says he: ‘Here bub!’ A cherub scooted up. ‘Go git the storehouse key.’”
Says Perk: “The angel took me in. An’ where we were, it’peared
That’bout a billion boxed-up things was there all nicely tiered.
The angel said, ‘When folks on earth do any- thing that’s small
Their souls git squizzled bit by bit; an’ when they die, then all
The little, teenty souls that come are packed in here, ye know,
Jes’ same’s they box tomater plants to giv’ ’em time to grow.’
He hunted’round an’ found a box. ‘There,’ finally said he,
‘We’ve got about as sing’lar thing as ever ye will see.’
Inside that box was nested dus’ a dozen boxes more;
The last box was the smallest box I ever saw before,
An’ in it was a teenty speck. ‘Is that a soul?’ says I.
‘Oh, no,’ said he, ‘the thing you see’s the eye- brow of a fly.
You couldn’t see the soul that’s there, to save your blessed neck,
Because it’s one ten-millionth part as big’s that leetle speck.
In fact it is the smallest soul that we have ever seen;
The label says’--he squinted hard--‘it’s one old Sam’wel Green.’
Is ticketed ‘The Limit; Number billion-umpty steen.’”
He’d rather swap hosses than eat a good meal,
He’d take all the chances--and Jim wouldn’t squeal!
He’d talk like a cyclone on any old skate
--Take a wheezy old pel ter with hopity gait
And he’d make you believe--would that Dick- erer Jim--
There were all kinds of pedigrees tied up in him.
And you bet your old boots, if he got you in range
He could touch you all right for a sale or a “change.”
--As keen as a brier, as sharp as a knife
He never got phazed except once in his life.
And that was a corker, by ginger, on him,
On a man from the city--just did it by lip.
Talked the man dumb and silly and giv’ him the hooks
Till the chap forked his money just simply on looks.
And he went back to town with a big double cross