FullReads

“Sir; howdy,” said a low and pleasant voice. And at once, in spite of my perverse resolve, I looked up. I someway felt rebuked.

The speaker was very slowly, noiselessly closing the door. I could hardly face him when he turned around. An old man, of sixty-five, at least, but with a face and an eye of the most cheery and wholesome expression I had ever seen in either youth or age. Over his broad bronzed forehead and white hair he wore a low-crowned, wide-brimmed black felt hat, somewhat rusted now, and with the band grease-crusted, and the binding frayed at intervals, and sagging from the threads that held it on. An old-styled frock coat of black, dull brown in streaks, and quite shiny about the collar and lapels. A waistcoat of no describable material or pattern, and a clean white shirt and collar of one piece, with a black string-tie and double bow, which would have been entirely concealed beneath the long white beard but for its having worked around to one side of the neck. The front outline of the face was cleanly shaven, and the beard, growing simply from the under chin and throat, lent the old pioneer the rather singular appearance of having hair all over him with this luxurious growth pulled out above his collar for mere sample.

I arose and asked the old man to sit down, handing him a chair decorously.

“No–no,” he said–“I’m much obleeged. I hain’t come in to bother you no more’n I can he’p. All I wanted was to know ef you got my poetry all right. You know I take yer paper,” he went on, in an explanatory way, “and seein’ you printed poetry in it once-in-a-while, I sent you some of mine–neighbors kindo’ advised me to,” he added apologetically, “and so I sent you some–two or three times I sent you some, but I hain’t never seed hide-ner-hair of it in your paper, and as I wus in town to-day, anyhow, I jest thought I’d kindo’ drap in and git it back, ef you ain’t goin’ to print it–’cause I allus save up most the things I write, aimin’ sometime to git ’em all struck off in pamphlet-form, to kindo’ distribit round ‘mongst the neighbors, don’t you know.”

Already I had begun to suspect my visitor’s identity, and was mechanically opening the drawer of our poetical department.

“How was your poetry signed?” I asked.

“Signed by my own name,” he answered proudly,–“signed by my own name,–Johnson–Benjamin F. Johnson, of Boone County–this state.”

“And is this one of them, Mr. Johnson?” I asked, unfolding a clumsily-folded manuscript, and closely scrutinizing the verse.

“How does she read?” said the old man eagerly, and searching in the meantime for his spectacles. “How does she read?–Then I can tell you!”

“It reads,” said I, studiously conning the old man’s bold but bad chirography, and tilting my chair back indolently,–“it reads like this–the first verse does,”–and I very gravely read:–

“Oh! the old swimmin’-hole!”

“Stop! Stop!” said the old man excitedly–“Stop right there! That’s my poetry, but that’s not the way to read it by a long shot! Give it to me!” and he almost snatched it from my hand. “Poetry like this ain’t no poetry at all, ‘less you read it natchurl and in jes the same sperit ‘at it’s writ in, don’t you understand. It’s a’ old man a-talkin’, rickollect, and a-feelin’ kindo’ sad, and yit kindo’ sorto’ good, too, and I opine he wouldn’t got that off with a face on him like a’ undertaker, and a voice as solemn as a cow-bell after dark! He’d say it more like this.”–And the old man adjusted his spectacles and read:–

“THE OLD SWIMMIN’-HOLE”

“Oh! the old swimmin’-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc’t ust to know
Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin’ out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,
And it’s hard to part ferever with the old swimmin’-hole.”