<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416825" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Old-Home Folks</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Such was the Child-World of the long-ago--<br>The little world these children used to know:--<br>Johnty, the oldest, and the best, perhaps,<br>Of the five happy little Hoosier chaps<br>Inhabiting this wee world all their own.--<br>Johnty, the leader, with his native tone<br>Of grave command--a general on parade<br>Whose each punctilious order was obeyed<br>By his proud followers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But Johnty yet--<br>After all serious duties--could forget<br>The gravity of life to the extent,<br>At times, of kindling much astonishment<br>About him: With a quick, observant eye,<br>And mind and memory, he could supply<br>The tamest incident with liveliest mirth;<br>And at the most unlooked-for times on earth<br>Was wont to break into some travesty<br>On those around him--feats of mimicry<br>Of this one's trick of gesture--that one's walk--<br>Or this one's laugh--or that one's funny talk,--<br>The way 'the watermelon-man' would try<br>His humor on town-folks that wouldn't buy;--<br>How he drove into town at morning--then<br>At dusk (alas!) how he drove out again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though these divertisements of Johnty's were<br>Hailed with a hearty glee and relish, there<br>Appeared a sense, on his part, of regret--<br>A spirit of remorse that would not let<br>Him rest for days thereafter.--Such times he,<br>As some boy said, 'jist got too overly<br>Blame good fer common boys like us, you know,<br>To '_so_ciate with--less'n we 'ud go<br>And jine his church!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Next after Johnty came<br>His little tow-head brother, Bud by name.--<br>And O how white his hair was--and how thick<br>His face with freckles,--and his ears, how quick<br>And curious and intrusive!--And how pale<br>The blue of his big eyes;--and how a tale<br>Of Giants, Trolls or Fairies, bulged them still<br>Bigger and bigger!--and when 'Jack' would kill<br>The old 'Four-headed Giant,' Bud's big eyes<br>Were swollen truly into giant-size.<br>And Bud was apt in make-believes--would hear<br>His Grandma talk or read, with such an ear<br>And memory of both subject and big words,<br>That he would take the book up afterwards<br>And feign to 'read aloud,' with such success<br>As caused his truthful elders real distress.<br>But he _must_ have _big words_--they seemed to give<br>Extremer range to the superlative--<br>That was his passion. 'My Gran'ma,' he said,<br>One evening, after listening as she read<br>Some heavy old historical review--<br>With copious explanations thereunto<br>Drawn out by his inquiring turn of mind,--<br>'My Gran'ma she's read _all_ books--ever' kind<br>They is, 'at tells all 'bout the land an' sea<br>An' Nations of the Earth!--An' she is the<br>Historicul-est woman ever wuz!'<br>(Forgive the verse's chuckling as it does<br>In its erratic current.--Oftentimes<br>The little willowy waterbrook of rhymes<br>Must falter in its music, listening to<br>The children laughing as they used to do.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who shall sing a simple ditty all about the Willow,<br>Dainty-fine and delicate as any bending spray<br>That dandles high the happy bird that flutters there to trill a<br>Tremulously tender song of greeting to the May.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, my lovely Willow!--Let the Waters lilt your graces,--<br>They alone with limpid kisses lave your leaves above,<br>Flashing back your sylvan beauty, and in shady places<br>Peering up with glimmering pebbles, like the eyes of love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Next, Maymie, with her hazy cloud of hair,<br>And the blue skies of eyes beneath it there.<br>Her dignified and 'little lady' airs<br>Of never either romping up the stairs<br>Or falling down them; thoughtful everyway<br>Of others first--The kind of child at play<br>That 'gave up,' for the rest, the ripest pear<br>Or peach or apple in the garden there<br>Beneath the trees where swooped the airy swing--<br>She pushing it, too glad for anything!<br>Or, in the character of hostess, she<br>Would entertain her friends delightfully<br>In her play-house,--with strips of carpet laid<br>Along the garden-fence within the shade<br>Of the old apple-trees--where from next yard<br>Came the two dearest friends in her regard,<br>The little Crawford girls, Ella and Lu--<br>As shy and lovely as the lilies grew<br>In their idyllic home,--yet sometimes they<br>Admitted Bud and Alex to their play,<br>Who did their heavier work and helped them fix<br>To have a 'Festibul'--and brought the bricks<br>And built the 'stove,' with a real fire and all,<br>And stovepipe-joint for chimney, looming tall<br>And wonderfully smoky--even to<br>Their childish aspirations, as it blew<br>And swooped and swirled about them till their sight<br>Was feverish even as their high delight.<br>Then Alex, with his freckles, and his freaks<br>Of temper, and the peach-bloom of his cheeks,<br>And '_amber-colored_ hair'--his mother said<br>'Twas that, when others laughed and called it '_red_'<br>And Alex threw things at them--till they'd call<br>A truce, agreeing ''t'uz n't red _ut-tall_!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But Alex was affectionate beyond<br>The average child, and was extremely fond<br>Of the paternal relatives of his<br>Of whom he once made estimate like this:--<br>'_I'm_ only got _two_ brothers,--but my _Pa_<br>He's got most brothers'n you ever saw!--<br>He's got _seben_ brothers!--Yes, an' they're all my<br>Seben Uncles!--Uncle John, an' Jim,--an' I'<br>Got Uncle George, an' Uncle Andy, too,<br>An' Uncle Frank, an' Uncle Joe.--An' you<br>_Know_ Uncle _Mart_.--An', all but _him_, they're great<br>Big mens!--An' nen s Aunt Sarah--she makes eight!--<br>I'm got _eight_ uncles!--'cept Aunt Sarah _can't_<br>Be ist my _uncle_ 'cause she's ist my _aunt_!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, next to Alex--and the last indeed<br>Of these five little ones of whom you read--<br>Was baby Lizzie, with her velvet lisp,--<br>As though her Elfin lips had caught some wisp<br>Of floss between them as they strove with speech,<br>Which ever seemed just in yet out of reach--<br>Though what her lips missed, her dark eyes could say<br>With looks that made her meaning clear as day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, knowing now the children, you must know<br>The father and the mother they loved so:--<br>The father was a swarthy man, black-eyed,<br>Black-haired, and high of forehead; and, beside<br>The slender little mother, seemed in truth<br>A very king of men--since, from his youth,<br>To his hale manhood _now_--(worthy as then,--<br>A lawyer and a leading citizen<br>Of the proud little town and county-seat--<br>His hopes his neighbors', and their fealty sweet)--<br>He had known outdoor labor--rain and shine--<br>Bleak Winter, and bland Summer--foul and fine.<br>So Nature had ennobled him and set<br>Her symbol on him like a coronet:<br>His lifted brow, and frank, reliant face.--<br>Superior of stature as of grace,<br>Even the children by the spell were wrought<br>Up to heroics of their simple thought,<br>And saw him, trim of build, and lithe and straight<br>And tall, almost, as at the pasture-gate<br>The towering ironweed the scythe had spared<br>For their sakes, when The Hired Man declared<br>It would grow on till it became a _tree_,<br>With cocoanuts and monkeys in--maybe!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, though the children, in their pride and awe<br>And admiration of the father, saw<br>A being so exalted--even more<br>Like adoration was the love they bore<br>The gentle mother.--Her mild, plaintive face<br>Was purely fair, and haloed with a grace<br>And sweetness luminous when joy made glad<br>Her features with a smile; or saintly sad<br>As twilight, fell the sympathetic gloom<br>Of any childish grief, or as a room<br>Were darkened suddenly, the curtain drawn<br>Across the window and the sunshine gone.<br>Her brow, below her fair hair's glimmering strands,<br>Seemed meetest resting-place for blessing hands<br>Or holiest touches of soft finger-tips<br>And little roseleaf-cheeks and dewy lips.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though heavy household tasks were pitiless,<br>No little waist or coat or checkered dress<br>But knew her needle's deftness; and no skill<br>Matched hers in shaping pleat or flounce or frill;<br>Or fashioning, in complicate design,<br>All rich embroideries of leaf and vine,<br>With tiniest twining tendril,--bud and bloom<br>And fruit, so like, one's fancy caught perfume<br>And dainty touch and taste of them, to see<br>Their semblance wrought in such rare verity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shrined in her sanctity of home and love,<br>And love's fond service and reward thereof,<br>Restore her thus, O blessed Memory!--<br>Throned in her rocking-chair, and on her knee<br>Her sewing--her workbasket on the floor<br>Beside her,--Springtime through the open door<br>Balmily stealing in and all about<br>The room; the bees' dim hum, and the far shout<br>And laughter of the children at their play,<br>And neighbor-children from across the way<br>Calling in gleeful challenge--save alone<br>One boy whose voice sends back no answering tone--<br>The boy, prone on the floor, above a book<br>Of pictures, with a rapt, ecstatic look--<br>Even as the mother's, by the selfsame spell,<br>Is lifted, with a light ineffable--<br>As though her senses caught no mortal cry,<br>But heard, instead, some poem going by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Child-heart is so strange a little thing--<br>So mild--so timorously shy and small.--<br>When _grown-up_ hearts throb, it goes scampering<br>Behind the wall, nor dares peer out at all!--<br>It is the veriest mouse<br>That hides in any house--<br>So wild a little thing is any Child-heart!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">_Child-heart!--mild heart!--<br>Ho, my little wild heart!--<br>Come up here to me out o' the dark,<br>Or let me come to you!_</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So lorn at times the Child-heart needs must be.<br>With never one maturer heart for friend<br>And comrade, whose tear-ripened sympathy<br>And love might lend it comfort to the end,--<br>Whose yearnings, aches and stings.<br>Over poor little things<br>Were pitiful as ever any Child-heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">_Child-heart!--mild heart!--<br>Ho, my little wild heart!--<br>Come up here to me out o' the dark,<br>Or let me come to you!_</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Times, too, the little Child-heart must be glad--<br>Being so young, nor knowing, as _we_ know.<br>The fact from fantasy, the good from bad,<br>The joy from woe, the--_all_ that hurts us so!<br>What wonder then that thus<br>It hides away from us?--<br>So weak a little thing is any Child-heart!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">_Child-heart!--mild heart!--<br>Ho, my little wild heart!--<br>Come up here to me out o' the dark,<br>Or let me come to you!_</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay, little Child-heart, you have never need<br>To fear _us_,--we are weaker far than you--<br>Tis _we_ who should be fearful--we indeed<br>Should hide us, too, as darkly as you do,--<br>Safe, as yourself, withdrawn,<br>Hearing the World roar on<br>Too willful, woful, awful for the Child-heart!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">_Child-heart!--mild heart!--<br>Ho, my little wild heart!--<br>Come up here to me out o' the dark,<br>Or let me come to you!_</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The clock chats on confidingly; a rose<br>Taps at the window, as the sunlight throws<br>A brilliant, jostling checkerwork of shine<br>And shadow, like a Persian-loom design,<br>Across the homemade carpet--fades,--and then<br>The dear old colors are themselves again.<br>Sounds drop in visiting from everywhere--<br>The bluebird's and the robin's trill are there,<br>Their sweet liquidity diluted some<br>By dewy orchard spaces they have come:<br>Sounds of the town, too, and the great highway--<br>The Mover-wagons' rumble, and the neigh<br>Of overtraveled horses, and the bleat<br>Of sheep and low of cattle through the street--<br>A Nation's thoroughfare of hopes and fears,<br>First blazed by the heroic pioneers<br>Who gave up old-home idols and set face<br>Toward the unbroken West, to found a race<br>And tame a wilderness now mightier than<br>All peoples and all tracts American.<br>Blent with all outer sounds, the sounds within:--<br>In mild remoteness falls the household din<br>Of porch and kitchen: the dull jar and thump<br>Of churning; and the 'glung-glung' of the pump,<br>With sudden pad and skurry of bare feet<br>Of little outlaws, in from field or street:<br>The clang of kettle,--rasp of damper-ring<br>And bang of cookstove-door--and everything<br>That jingles in a busy kitchen lifts<br>Its individual wrangling voice and drifts<br>In sweetest tinny, coppery, pewtery tone<br>Of music hungry ear has ever known<br>In wildest famished yearning and conceit<br>Of youth, to just cut loose and eat and eat!--<br>The zest of hunger still incited on<br>To childish desperation by long-drawn<br>Breaths of hot, steaming, wholesome things that stew<br>And blubber, and up-tilt the pot-lids, too,<br>Filling the sense with zestful rumors of<br>The dear old-fashioned dinners children love:<br>Redolent savorings of home-cured meats,<br>Potatoes, beans, and cabbage; turnips, beets<br>And parsnips--rarest composite entire<br>That ever pushed a mortal child's desire<br>To madness by new-grated fresh, keen, sharp<br>Horseradish--tang that sets the lips awarp<br>And watery, anticipating all<br>The cloyed sweets of the glorious festival.--<br>Still add the cinnamony, spicy scents<br>Of clove, nutmeg, and myriad condiments<br>In like-alluring whiffs that prophesy<br>Of sweltering pudding, cake, and custard pie--<br>The swooning-sweet aroma haunting all<br>The house--upstairs and down--porch, parlor, hall<br>And sitting-room--invading even where<br>The Hired Man sniffs it in the orchard-air,<br>And pauses in his pruning of the trees<br>To note the sun minutely and to--sneeze.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then Cousin Rufus comes--the children hear<br>His hale voice in the old hall, ringing clear<br>As any bell. Always he came with song<br>Upon his lips and all the happy throng<br>Of echoes following him, even as the crowd<br>Of his admiring little kinsmen--proud<br>To have a cousin _grown_--and yet as young<br>Of soul and cheery as the songs he sung.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He was a student of the law--intent<br>Soundly to win success, with all it meant;<br>And so he studied--even as he played,--<br>With all his heart: And so it was he made<br>His gallant fight for fortune--through all stress<br>Of battle bearing him with cheeriness<br>And wholesome valor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the children had<br>Another relative who kept them glad<br>And joyous by his very merry ways--<br>As blithe and sunny as the summer days,--<br>Their father's youngest brother--Uncle Mart.<br>The old 'Arabian Nights' he knew by heart--<br>'Baron Munchausen,' too; and likewise 'The<br>Swiss Family Robinson.'--And when these three<br>Gave out, as he rehearsed them, he could go<br>Straight on in the same line--a steady flow<br>Of arabesque invention that his good<br>Old mother never clearly understood.<br>He _was_ to be a _printer_--wanted, though,<br>To be an _actor_.--But the world was 'show'<br>Enough for _him_,--theatric, airy, gay,--<br>Each day to him was jolly as a play.<br>And some poetic symptoms, too, in sooth,<br>Were certain.--And, from his apprentice youth,<br>He joyed in verse-quotations--which he took<br>Out of the old 'Type Foundry Specimen Book.'<br>He craved and courted most the favor of<br>The children.--They were foremost in his love;<br>And pleasing _them_, he pleased his own boy-heart<br>And kept it young and fresh in every part.<br>So was it he devised for them and wrought<br>To life his quaintest, most romantic thought:--<br>Like some lone castaway in alien seas,<br>He built a house up in the apple-trees,<br>Out in the corner of the garden, where<br>No man-devouring native, prowling there,<br>Might pounce upon them in the dead o' night--<br>For lo, their little ladder, slim and light,<br>They drew up after them. And it was known<br>That Uncle Mart slipped up sometimes alone<br>And drew the ladder in, to lie and moon<br>Over some novel all the afternoon.<br>And one time Johnty, from the crowd below,--<br>Outraged to find themselves deserted so--<br>Threw bodily their old black cat up in<br>The airy fastness, with much yowl and din.<br>Resulting, while a wild periphery<br>Of cat went circling to another tree,<br>And, in impassioned outburst, Uncle Mart<br>Loomed up, and thus relieved his tragic heart:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''_Hence, long-tailed, ebon-eyed, nocturnal ranger!<br>What led thee hither 'mongst the types and cases?<br>Didst thou not know that running midnight races<br>O'er standing types was fraught with imminent danger?<br>Did hunger lead thee--didst thou think to find<br>Some rich old cheese to fill thy hungry maw?<br>Vain hope! for none but literary jaw<br>Can masticate our cookery for the mind!_''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So likewise when, with lordly air and grace,<br>He strode to dinner, with a tragic face<br>With ink-spots on it from the office, he<br>Would aptly quote more 'Specimen-poetry--'<br>Perchance like ''Labor's bread is sweet to eat,<br>(_Ahem!_) And toothsome is the toiler's meat.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, could you see them _all_, at lull of noon!--<br>A sort of _boisterous_ lull, with clink of spoon<br>And clatter of deflecting knife, and plate<br>Dropped saggingly, with its all-bounteous weight,<br>And dragged in place voraciously; and then<br>Pent exclamations, and the lull again.--<br>The garland of glad faces 'round the board--<br>Each member of the family restored<br>To his or her place, with an extra chair<br>Or two for the chance guests so often there.--<br>The father's farmer-client, brought home from<br>The courtroom, though he 'didn't _want_ to come<br>Tel he jist saw he _hat_ to!' he'd explain,<br>Invariably, time and time again,<br>To the pleased wife and hostess, as she pressed<br>Another cup of coffee on the guest.--<br>Or there was Johnty's special chum, perchance,<br>Or Bud's, or both--each childish countenance<br>Lit with a higher glow of youthful glee,<br>To be together thus unbrokenly,--<br>Jim Offutt, or Eck Skinner, or George Carr--<br>The very nearest chums of Bud's these are,--<br>So, very probably, _one_ of the three,<br>At least, is there with Bud, or _ought_ to be.<br>Like interchange the town-boys each had known--<br>His playmate's dinner better than his own--<br>_Yet_ blest that he was ever made to stay<br>At _Almon Keefer's, any_ blessed day,<br>For _any_ meal!... Visions of biscuits, hot<br>And flaky-perfect, with the golden blot<br>Of molten butter for the center, clear,<br>Through pools of clover-honey--_dear-o-dear!_--<br>With creamy milk for its divine 'farewell':<br>And then, if any one delectable<br>Might yet exceed in sweetness, O restore<br>The cherry-cobbler of the days of yore<br>Made only by Al Keefer's mother!--Why,<br>The very thought of it ignites the eye<br>Of memory with rapture--cloys the lip<br>Of longing, till it seems to ooze and drip<br>With veriest juice and stain and overwaste<br>Of that most sweet delirium of taste<br>That ever visited the childish tongue,<br>Or proved, as now, the sweetest thing unsung.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Whitcomb+Riley">James Whitcomb Riley</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416825" data-title="The Old-Home Folks de James Whitcomb Riley" data-description="Such was the Child-World of the long-ago-- The little world these children used to know:-- Johnty, the oldest, and the best, perhaps, Of the five happy little Hoosier chaps Inhabiting this wee world all their own.-- Johnty, the leader, with his na..."></div> </div> </div>

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