JIM BLUDSO.
BY COLONEL JOHN HAY.
Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Because he don't live, you see:
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three years
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks,
The night of the _Prairie Bell?_
He weren't no saint--them engineers
Is all pretty much alike--
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike.
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward man in a row--
But he never funked, and he never lied,
I reckon he never knowed how.
And this was all the religion he had--
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the Pilot's bell;
And if the _Prairie Bell_ took fire--
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last--
The _Movastar_ was a better boat,
But the _Belle_ she _wouldn't_ be passed.
And so come tearin' along that night--
The oldest craft on the line,
With a nigger squat on her safety valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.
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