Farm festivals / by Will Carleton [electronic text]

III.

With added calm, untangling from The twists of bench repose, When silence called, serene and bald, The President arose; And with bowed head he humbly said, "To help this meetin' 'long, My second one, James Madison, Will now submit a song." James M. appeared, his infant beard Hopes for the future shedding, And sung in strains of anxious pains

ELIPHALET CHAPIN'S WEDDING.

'Twas when the leaves of Autumn were by tempest-fingers picked, Eliphalet Chapin started to become a benedict; With an ancient two-ox wagon to bring back his new-found goods, He hawed and gee'd and floundered through some twenty miles o' woods; With prematrimonial ardor he his hornéd steeds did press, But Eliphalet's wedding journey didn't bristle with success. Oh no, woe, woe! With candor to digress, Eliphalet's wedding journey didn't tremble with success.

He had not carried five miles his mouth-disputed face, When his wedding garments parted in some inconvenient place; He'd have given both his oxen to a wife that now was dead, For her company two minutes with a needle and a thread. But he pinned them up, with twinges of occasional distress, Feeling that his wedding wouldn't be a carnival of dress: "Haw, Buck!' Gee, Bright! Derned pretty mess!" No; Eliphalet was not strictly a spectacular success.

He had not gone a ten-mile when a wheel demurely broke, A disunited family of felloe, hub, and spoke;

It joined, with flattering prospects, the Society of Wrecks; And he had to cut a sapling, and insert it 'neath the "ex."

"NOW, WHEN HE DROVE HIS EQUIPAGE UP TO HIS SWEETHEART'S DOOR."

So he plowed the hills and valleys with that Doric wheel and tire, Feeling that his wedding journey was not all he could desire. "Gee, Bright! G'long, Buck!" He shouted, hoarse with ire: No; Eliphalet's wedding journey none in candor could admire!

He had not gone fifteen miles with extended face forlorn, When Night lay down upon him hard, and kept him there till morn; And when the daylight chuckled at the gloom within his mind, One ox was "Strayed or Stolen," and the other hard to find. So yoking Buck as usual, he assumed the part of Bright (Constituting a menagerie diverting to the sight); With "Haw, Buck! Gee, Buck! Sha'n't get there till night!" No; Eliphalet's wedding journey was not one intense delight.

Now, when he drove his equipage up to his sweetheart's door, The wedding guests had tired and gone, just half an hour before; The preacher had from sickness an unprofitable call, And had sent a voice proclaiming that he couldn't come at all; The parents had been prejudiced by some one, more or less, And the sire the bridegroom greeted with a different word from "bless." "Blank your head, You blank!" he said; "We'll break this off, I guess!" No; Eliphalet's wedding was not an unqualified success.

Now, when the bride saw him arrive, she shook her crimson locks, And vowed to goodness gracious she would never wed an ox; And with a vim deserving rather better social luck, She eloped that day by daylight with a swarthy Indian "buck," With the presents in the pockets of her woolen wedding-dress; And "Things ain't mostly with me," quoth Eliphalet, "I confess." No—no; As things go, No fair mind 'twould impress, That Eliphalet Chapin's wedding was an unalloyed success.

Eliphalet Chapin started home—