Читать книгу Up in Maine: Stories of Yankee Life Told in Verse - Holman Day - Страница 16

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Oh, listen while I tell to you a truthful little

tale

Of a man whose teeth was double all the solid

way around;

He could jest as slick as preachin’ bite in two a

shingle nail,

Or squonch a moulded bullet, sah, and ev’ry

tooth was sound.

I’ve seen him lift a kag of pork, a-bitin’ on the

chine,

And he’d clench a rope and hang there like a

puppy to a root;

And a feller he could pull and twitch and yank

upon the line,

But he couldn’t do no bus’ness with tha’

double-toothed galoot.

He was luggin’ up some shingles—bunch, sah,

underneath each arm—

The time that he was shinglin’ of the Baptist

meetin’-house;

The ladder cracked and buckled, but he didn’t

think no harm,

When all at once she busted and he started

down kersouse.

His head, sah, when she busted, it was jest

abreast the eaves;

And he nipped, sah, quicker’n lightnin’, and

he gripped there with his teeth,

And he never dropped the shingles, but he hung

to both the sheaves,

Though the solid ground was suttinly more’n

thirty feet beneath.

He held there and he kicked there and he

squirmed, but no one come.

He was workin’ on the roof alone—there

warn’t no folks around.

He hung like death to niggers till his jaws was

set and numb,

And he reely thought he’d have to drop them

shingles on the ground.

But all at once old Skillins come a-toddlin’ down

the street.

Old Skil is sort of hump-backed and he allus

looks straight down;

So he never see’d the motions of them Number

’Leven feet,

And he went a-amblin’ by him—the goramded

blind old clown!

Now this ere part is truthful—ain’t a-stretehin’

it a mite—

When the feller see’d that Skillins was a-

walkin’ past the place,

Let go his teeth and hollered, but he grabbed

back quick and tight,

’Fore he had a chance to tumble, and he hung

there by the face.

And he never dropped the shingles and he never

missed his grip,

And he stepped out on the ladder when they

raised it underneath.

And up he went a-flukin’ with them shingles on

his hip,

—And there’s the satisfaction of a havin’

double teeth.