Cure for Homesickness

SHE wrote to her daddy in Portland, Maine, from out in Denver, Col.,

And she wrote, alas! despondently that life had commenced to pall;

And this was a woful, woful case, for she was a six-months’ bride,

Who was won and wed in the State of Maine by the side of the bounding tide.

And ah, alack, she was writing back, that she longed for Portland, Maine,

Till oh, her feelings had been that wrenched she could hardly stand the strain!

Though her hubby dear was still sincere, she sighed the livelong day

For a good old sniff of the sewers and salt from the breast of Casco Bay.

And she wrote she sighed, and she said she’d cried, and her appetite fell off,

And she’d grown as thin’s a belaying pin, with a terrible hacking cough;

And she sort of hinted that pretty soon she’d start on a reckless scoot

And hook for her home in Portland, Maine, by the very shortest route.

But her daddy dear was a man of sense, and he handles fish wholesale,

And he sat and fanned himself awhile with a big broad codfish tail;

And he recollected the way he felt when he dwelt in the World’s Fair whirl,

He slapped his head. “By hake,” he said, “I know what ails that girl.”

And he went to a ten-cord pile of cod and he pulled the biggest out,

A jib-shaped critter, broad’s a sail—three feet from tail to snout.

And he pasted a sheet of postage-stamps from snout clear down to tail,

Put on a quick-delivery stamp, and sent the cod by mail.

She smelled it a-coming two blocks off on the top of the postman’s pack;

She rushed to meet him, and scared him blind by climbing the poor man’s back.

But she got the fish, bit out a hunk, ate postage-stamps and all,

And a happy wife in a happy home lives out in Denver, Col.