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UP IN MAINE

Stories of Yankee Life Told in Verse

By Holman F. Day

With an Introduction by C. E. Littlefield

Boston: Small, Maynard & Company

1900

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     TO MY FRIEND

     AND FELLOW IN THE CRAFT OF LETTERS

     WINFIELD M. THOMPSON

     TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED
     FOR MORE THAN ONE OF THE STORIES
     TOLD HEREIN

     THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED




PREFACE


               I don’t know how to weave a roundelay,

               I couldn’t voice a sighing song of love;

               No mellow lyre that on which I play;

               I plunk a strident lute without a glove.


               The rhythm that is running through my stuff

                   Is not the whisp of maiden’s trailing gown;

               The metre, maybe, gallops rather rough,

               Like river-drivers storming down to town.


               --It’s more than likely something from the

                        wood,

               Where chocking axes scare the deer and

                        moose;

               A homely rhyme, and easy understood

                   --An echo from the weird domain of Spruce.


               Or else it’s just some Yankee notion, dressed

                   In rough-and-ready “Uncle Dudley” phrase;

               Some honest thought we common folks suggest,

                   --Some tricksy mem’ry-flash from boyhood’s

                        days.


               I cannot polish off this stilted rhyme

                   With all these homely notions in my brain.

               A sonnet, sir, would stick me every time;

                   Let’s have a chat ’bout common things in

                        Maine.


                                  Holman F. Day.


|A_BOUT three thousand years ago the “Preacher” declared that  “of
making many books there is no end.” This sublimely pessimistic truism
deserves to be considered in connection with the time when it was
written; otherwise it might accomplish results not intended by its
author.

It must be remembered that in the “Preacher’s” time books were
altogether in writing. It should also be borne in mind that if the
handwriting which we have in these days, speaking of the period prior to
the advent of the female typewriter, is to be accepted as any criterion,
--and inasmuch as all concede that history repeats itself, that may
well be assumed,--is easy to understand how, by reason of its
illegibility, he was also led to declare that “much study is a weariness
of the flesh.” It is quite obvious that this was the moving cause of his
delightfully doleful utterance as to books. Had he lived in this year
nineteen hundred, at either the closing of the nineteenth or the dawning
of the twentieth century,--as to whether it is closing or dawning I
make no assertion,--he might well have made same criticism, but from an
optimistic standpoint.

A competent litterateur informs me that there are now extant
3,725,423,201 books; that in America and England alone during the last
year 12,888 books entered upon a precarious existence, with the faint
though unexpressed hope of surviving “life’s fitful fever!” If the
conditions of the “Preacher’s” time obtained to-day, the vocabulary of
pessimism would be inadequate for the expression of similar views.

A careful examination by the writer, of all these well-nigh innumerable
monuments of learning, discloses the fact that the work now being
introduced to what I trust may be an equally innumerable army of readers
has no parallel in literature. If justification were needed, that fact
alone justifies its existence. This fact, however, is not necessary, as
the all-sufficient fact which warrants the collection of these unique
sketches in book form is that no one can read them without being
interested, entertained, and amused, as well as instructed and improved.
“The stubborn strength of Plymouth Rock” is nowhere better exemplified
than on the Maine farm, in the Maine woods, on the Maine coast, or in
the Maine workshop. From them, the author of “Up in Maine” has drawn his
inspiration. Rugged independence, singleness of purpose, unswerving
integrity, philosophy adequate for all occasions, the great realities
of life, and a cheerful disregard of conventionalities, are here found
in all their native strength and vigor. These peculiarities as
delineated may be rough, perhaps uncouth, but they are characteristic,
picturesque, engaging, and lifelike. His subjects are rough diamonds.
They have the inherent qualities from which great characters are
developed, and out of which heroes are made.

Through every chink and crevice of these rugged portrayals glitters the
sheen of pure gold, gold of standard weight and fineness, “gold tried in
the fire.” Finally it should be said that this is what is now known as a
book with a purpose, and that purpose, as the author confidentially
informs me, is to sell as many copies as possible, which he confidently
expects to do. To this most worthy end I trust I may have, in a small
degree, contributed by this introduction._

C. LITTLEFIELD.

Washington, D.C., March 17,1900.




‘ROUND HOME




AUNT SHAW’S PET JUG


               Now there was Uncle Elnathan Shaw,

               --Most regular man you ever saw!

               Just half-past four in the afternoon

               He’d start and whistle that old jig tune,

               Take the big blue jug from the but’ry shelf

               And trot down cellar, to draw himself

               Old cider enough to last him through

               The winter ev’nin’. Two quarts would do.

               --Just as regular as half-past four

               Come round, he’d tackle that cellar door,

               As he had for thutty years or more.


               And as regular, too, as he took that jug

               Aunt Shaw would yap through her old

                   mug,

               “Now, Nathan, for goodness’ sake take care

               You allus trip on the second stair;

               It seems as though you were just possessed

               To break that jug. It’s the very best

               There is in town and you know it, too,

               And  ’twas left to me by my great-aunt Sue.

               For goodness’ sake, why don’t yer lug

               A tin dish down, for ye’ll break that jug?”

               Allus the same, suh, for thirty years,

               Allus the same old twits and jeers

               Slammed for the nineteenth thousand time

               And still we wonder, my friend, at crime.


               But Nathan took it meek’s a pup

               And the worst he said was “Please shut up.”

               You know what the Good Book says befell

               The pitcher that went to the old-time well;

               Wal, whether  ’twas that or his time had come,

               Or his stiff old limbs got weak and numb

               Or whether his nerves at last giv’ in

               To Aunt Shaw’s everlasting chin--

               One day he slipped on that second stair,

               Whirled round and grabbed at the empty air.

               And clean to the foot of them stairs, ker-smack,

               He bumped on the bulge of his humped old back

               And he’d hardly finished the final bump

               When old Aunt Shaw she giv’ a jump

               And screamed downstairs as mad’s a bug

               “Dod-rot your hide, did ye break my jug?”


               Poor Uncle Nathan lay there flat

               Knocked in the shape of an old cocked hat,

               But he rubbed his legs, brushed off the dirt

               And found after all that he warn’t much hurt.

               And he’d saved the jug, for his last wild thought

               Had been of that; he might have caught

               At the cellar shelves and saved his fall,

               But he kept his hands on the jug through all.


               And now as he loosed his jealous hug

               His wife just screamed, “Did ye break my

                   jug?”

               Not a single word for his poor old bones

               Nor a word when she heard his awful groans,

               But the blamed old hard-shelled turkle just

               Wanted to know if that jug was bust.


               Old Uncle Nathan he let one roar

               And he shook his fist at the cellar door;

               “Did ye break my jug?” she was yellin’ still.

               “No, durn yer pelt, but I swow I will.”

               And you’d thought that the house was a-going

                   to fall

               When the old jug smashed on the cellar wall.





OLD BOGGS’S SLARNT



               Old Bill Boggs is always sayin’ that he’d like to

                   but he carn’t;

               He hain’t never had no chances, he hain’t never

                   got no slarnt.

               Says it’s all dum foolish tryin’, ’less ye git the

                   proper start,

               Says he’s never seed no op’nin’ so he’s never

                   had no heart.

               But he’s ch