“Thy words that might have shook the breathless world with might; Alas! I catchested not on any earthly ground, That voice that might have guided nations high aright, Congealed within thy tiny windpipe ’twas, it did not steal around— Sweet little thing.
“Sweet little thing, so soon thy wings unfurled A wing, a feather lone low floated up the yard; A world might weep, a world might stand appalled, To hear it low rehearsed by tearful female bard— Sweet little thing.”
Jest as soon as Ardelia stopped rehearsin’ the verses, Miss Tutt sez agin to me:
And agin I sez calmly, and trutbfully, “Yes, it is a very remarkable one!”
“And now,” sez Miss Tutt, plungin’ her hand in the bag, and drawin’ out a sheet of paper, “to convince you that Ardelia has always had this divine gift of poesy—that it is not, all the effect of culture and high education—let me read to you a poem she wrote when she wuz only a mere child,” and Miss Tutt read:
“At the age of fourteen years, two months and eight days.
“Oh Cat! Sweet Tabby cat of mine; 6 months of age has passed o’er thee, And I would not resign, resign The pleasure that I find in you. Dear old cat!”
“Don’t you think,” sez Miss Tutt, “that this poem shows a fund of passion, a reserve power of passion and constancy, remarkable in one so young?”
“Yes,” sez I reasonably, “no doubt she liked the cat. And,” sez I, wantin’ to say somethin’ pleasant and agreeable to her, “no doubt it was a likely cat.”
“Oh the cat itself is of miner importance,” sez Miss Tutt. “We will fling the cat to the winds. It’s of my daughter I would speak. I simply handled the cat to show the rare precocious intellect. Oh! how it gushed out in the last line in the unconquerable burst of repressed passion—’Dear old cat!’ Shakespeare might have wrote that line, do you not think so?”
“No doubt he might,” sez I, calmly, “but he didn’t.”
I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: “He wuzn’t aquainted with the cat.”
She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:
“Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere common writer. Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while she wuz waitin’ for the dish water to bile, and sent ’em right off to the printer, without glancin’ at ’em agin.’