BILL'S IN TROUBLE

I've got a letter, parson, from my son away out West, An' my 01' heart is heavy as an anvil in my breast, To think the boy whose future I had once so nicely

planned,

Should wander from the path of right and come to such

an end.

I tol' him when he left us, only three short years ago, He'd find himself a-plowin' in a mighty crooked row. He's mi~.<;ed his father's counsel and his mother's prayers,

       too

But he said the farm was hateful and he guessed he'd

       have to go.

I know there's big temptations for a youngster in the

West, But I believed our Billy had the courage to resist, An' when he left I warned him of the ever waitin'

       snares

That lie like hidden serpents in life's pathway every­

wheres ; But Bill he promised faithful to be careful, an' allowed That he would build up a reputation that would make

       us mighty proud.

But it seems as how my counsel sort 0' faded from his

mind, And now he's got in trouble of the very worstest kind. His letters came so seldom that I somehow sort 0'

       knowed

That Billy was a trampin' on a mighty rocky road,

But never once imagined he would bow my head in

shame, And in the dust'd waller his old daddy's honored name. He writes from out in Denver, and the story's mighty

       short ;

I jest can't tell his mother!-It'll crush her poor 01'

       heart! .

An' so I reckoned, parson, you might break the news

       to her­

Bill's in the Legislatur', but he doesn't say what fur!

                                                          James Barton Adams.