BIRTHPLACE OF HOLMES, CAMBRIDGE,

MASSACHUSETTS

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split, nor bent, nor broke,
That was for spokes and floors and sills;

He sent for lancewood to make the thills;

The cross-bars were ash, from the straightest trees; The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,

But lasts like iron for things like these;

The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"
Last of its timber, they couldn't sell 'em.
Never an ax had seen their chips,

And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery tips;
Step and pop iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;

Thoroughbrace bison-skin; thick and wide;
Boot-top dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died,
That was the way he "put her through."
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"

"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then; Eighteen hundred and twenty came;

Running as usual; much the same.

Thirty and Forty at last arrive,

And then came fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.

In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;

Take it. -You're welcome. - No extra charge.)