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Title: "Sary Emma's Photygraphs"
Author: Joseph Crosby Lincoln [
More Titles by Lincoln]
Our Sary Emma is possessed ter be at somethin' queer;
She's allers doin' loony things, unheard of fur and near.
One time there wa'n't no limit ter the distance she would tramp
Ter get a good-fer-nothin', wuthless, cancelled postage-stamp;
Another spell folks couldn't rest ontil, by hook or crook,
She got 'em all ter write their names inside a leetle book;
But though them fits was bad enough, the wust is nowadays,
Fer now she's got that pesky freak, the photygraphin' craze.
She had ter have a camera--and them things cost a sight--
So she took up subscriptions fer the "Woman's Home Delight"
And got one fer a premium--a blamed new-fangled thing,
That takes a tin-type sudden, when she presses on a spring;
And sence she got it, sakes alive! there's nothin' on the place
That hain't been pictured lookin' like a horrible disgrace:
The pigs, the cows, the horse, the colt, the chickens large and small;
She goes a-gunnin' fer 'em, and she bags 'em, one and all.
She tuk me once a-settin' up on top a load er hay:
My feet shets out the wagon, and my head's a mile away;
She took her Ma in our back yard, a-hanging out the clothes,
With hands as big as buckets, and a face that's mostly nose.
A yard of tongue and monstrous teeth is what she calls a dog;
The cat's a kind er fuzzy-lookin' shadder in a fog;
And I've got a suspicion that what killed the brindle calf
Was that he seen his likeness in our Sary's photygraph.
She's "tonin'," er "develerpin'," er "printin'," ha'f the time;
She's allers buyin' pasteboard ter mount up her latest crime:
Our front room and the settin'-room is like some awful show,
With freaks and framed outrages stuck all 'round 'em in a row:
But soon I'll take them picters, and I'll fetch some of 'em out
And hang 'em 'round the garden when the corn begins ter sprout;
We'll have no crows and blackbirds ner that kind er feathered trash,
'Cause them photygraphs of Sary's, they beat scarecrows all ter smash.
[The end]
Joseph Crosby Lincoln's poem: "Sary Emma's Photygraphs"
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