LEADVILLE DEGENERATE.
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tion in a fresh start that comes to us in September. Teachers and pupils, discipline and disobedience forgotten, meet with a cordial greeting, both of a certainty that the coming term will be one of marked success. Merchants enter their counting-rooms in the flush of expectation that their ventures this fall will end with an unusual balance in their favor. The best sermons come to us from the pulpit. It is said that more literary work has been performed in this
month than in that of any other during the year. All this tells its own story. It is Nature who has laid her hand, fresh and cool, upon tired heads, with a benediction of courage and hope, and all are ready to appreciate the words of Longfellow:
"The morrow was a beautiful September morn; The earth was beautiful as if new born, There was that nameless splendor everywhere, That wild exhilaration in the air, Which makes the passers in the city street Congratulate each other as they meet." —Kansas City Journal.
LEADVILLE DEGENERATE.
[The spirit of BRET HARTE meets O. WILDE in Leadville.]
Why am I lookin' so sick an' disgusted?
I haint no objections to tellin' you why ;
You look like you'd feel for a man in affliction,
'N' I'll tell you, jes you. Yes, I am feelin' dry.
Brandy 'll do me. Thar; set on thet table.
Feet's rather tender? Only been yer a year?
I wuz one o' the crowd that fust come to these diggin's.
Got run out o' Missoury for shovin' the queer.
Leadville wuz lively in them days, 'n bloomin'.
Tied a man up ter a tree twicet a week;
Most every evenin' some s'loon had a shootin' bee,
'N' if we didn't plant one daily the weather wuz bleak.
But Leadville's degen'ratin', makes me feel lonesome,
Got t' have a biled shirt 'n' cane, to be dressed;
But what breaks me up wust is that sign over yander,
"Please don't shoot the pi-anist; he's doin' his best."
Blow'd the propri'tor, 'n' he tried to 'xplain it,
By tellin' how 'xpensive the feller had been;
Cost 'im a thousand' to bring 'im from It'ly,
'N' that kind o' 'pology—almighty thin!
"Don't shoot the pi-anist. Why when things wuz boomin'
Th'ad three good big fiddlers a sittin' up thar,
'N' then if a feller did feel like a-poppin' one,
'Twaz "Durn the 'xpense; fiddlers aint very rar.
But this feller's gettin' so durned pickyunish,
A tryin' to scrimp us with one stid o' three,
'N' askin' a gentleman not to shoot thet one—
Leadville aint no ways nigh what it use ter be.
"Don't shoot the pi-anist!" Why, wuts a man to shoot?
A man's got ter let out his fun in some way,
F 'twas a Dutchy 'r Frenchy—but a black 'n' tan 'Talian!
'N' he's such a good mark, aint he now, stranger, say?
"Don't shoot the pi-anist!" I tell you wut, stranger,
There's too many preachers 'n' 'xhorters for me,
Seems to me they're cuttin' off all a man's liberty—
Just a chaw o' that fine cut, sir—Don't you agree?
Aint I paid for this batt'ry, an' don't she belong to me?
Aint a man right to do wut he likes with his own?
Good bye, stranger, the whiskey here's getttin' too weak for
I'm gain' for a place that's got some kind o' tone.
Aint I paid for this batt'ry, an'don't she belong to me?
Aint a man right to do wut he likes with his own?
Good bye, stranger, the whiskey here's gettin' too weak for me;
I'm goin' for a place that's got some kind o' tone. ***