Mother Carey's Chickens
when the spectacles were safely on the bridge of his nose. Whereupon he read::—
"There came to port last Sunday night
The queerest little craft,
Without an inch of rigging on;
I looked, and looked, and laughed.
It seemed so curious that she
Should cross the unknown water,
And moor herself within my room—
My daughter, O my daughter!
Yet, by these presents, witness all,
She's welcome fifty times,
And comes consigned to Hope and Love
And common metre rhymes.
She has no manifest but this;
No flag floats o'er the water;
She's rather new for British Lloyd's—
My daughter, O my daughter!
"Ring out, wild bells—and tame ones, too;
Ring out the lover's moon,
Ring in the little worsted socks,
Ring in the bib and spoon."[1]
"Oh, Peter, how pretty!" said Mother Carey all in a glow. "You never showed it to me!"
"You were too much occupied with the aforesaid 'queer little craft,' was n't she, Nan—I
12
- ↑ George W. Cable.
