Thomas R. Lounsbury, ed. (1838–1915). Yale Book of American Verse. 1912.
Francis Bret Harte 18361902
Francis Bret Harte199 The Society upon the Stanislaus
I
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I ’ll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
For any scientific gent to whale his fellowman, And, if a member don’t agree with his peculiar whim, To lay for that same member for to “put a head” on him. Than the first six months’ proceedings of that same Society, Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones. From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare; And Jones then asked the chair for a suspension of the rules, Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules. It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones’s family vault; He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown, And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town. To say another is an ass,—at least, to all intent; Nor should the individual who happens to be meant Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent. A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen, And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more. In a warfare with the remnants of a palæozoic age; And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin, Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in. For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James; And I ’ve told in simple language what I know about the row That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.