Poems (Howard)/Helping the Poor

by Hattie Howard

Helping the Poor.

A comely Hoosier maid was she,
 Bewitching, fair, and adipose;
In anecdote and repartee
 Amusing, witty, and verbose.

A package came to her address—
 We opened it by candlelight—
Whose contents we but dared to guess,
 While she declared "'twas dynamite."

But, no; in smiling rows there lay
 The masterpiece of dental skill,
As we supposed, in every way
 Designed according to her will.

Deceitful teeth were hid before
 Behind her honest crimson lips,
Like seeds within a melon core,
 And brown as Saratoga chips.

But this, the whitest ivory set,
 The kind that grows upon the trees—
Oh! not the set, we quite forget—
 The bone, the stuff, or, what you please.

But, ah! the skilled artificer
 Had lost his pattern or his tools;
For, as it proved, they never were
 Cut out by wisdom's simple rules.

"The bungling craftsman is insane,"
 Said she, "or else southwest by south;
And when I seek his den again,
 I'll make him look down in the mouth!"

She tried them on—that is to say,
 She tried them in; they would n't fit,
When, never daunted, ever gay,
 Her mind conceived this happy hit.

'T was in that time when, o'er the land,
 Long-legged insects had devoured
All verdure green on every hand—
 Yea, everything that leaved or flowered.

The dearth of crops that far and wide
 Impoverished many a household place,.
Discouraged farmers sorely tried,
 And famine stared them in the face.

When from a nation's affluence ran
 Abundant streams of kindliness,
Relieving many a hapless man,
 And saving families from distress.

So, to our friend this thought arose,
 Amid our laughter, unrepressed:
"I b'lieve I'll send my teeth to those
 Grasshopper sufferers out West!"