--And again I thought
Of a probable likelihood to be
Kept in after school--for a girl was caught
Catching a note from me.
And down through the woods to the swimming-hole--
Where the big, white, hollow, old sycamore grows,--
And we never cared when the water was cold,
And always "ducked" the boy that told
On the fellow that tied the clothes.--
When life went so like a dreamy rhyme,
That it seems to me now that then
The world was having a jollier time
Than it ever will have again.
The crude production is received, I am glad to note, with some
expressions of favor from the company, though Bob, of course, must
heartlessly dissipate my weak delight by saying, "Well, it's certainly
bad enough; though," he goes on with an air of deepest critical
sagacity and fairness, "considered, as it should be, justly, as the
production of a jour-poet, why, it might be worse--that is, a little
worse."
"Probably," I remember saying,--"Probably I might redeem myself by
reading you this little amateurish bit of verse, enclosed to me in a
letter by mistake, not very long ago." I here fish an envelope from my
pocket the address of which all recognize as in Bob's almost printed
writing.
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