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And hear the cries and hideous din 

 Of the crowded ways of vice and sin — 

 Can it be, I say, that all this wonder, 

 This hum and buzz and clamorous thunder, 

 This wrangle and tangle and hubbub of strife 

 For the top of the heap on the scaffold of life, 

 Has been struck from time's inexhaustible mint 

 By a single blow on a Yankee's flint? 



I know that some of you call me a croaker, 



And long to seize the end of my choker, 



When I sigh that the world has altered so 



From the simpler ways of the long ago ; 



But after all, if you fully explore 



Where the past is hid with its iron door, 



And call to mind the myriad joys 



Of the glorious days when you were boys, — 



Go down the meadow under the hill 



Where the old red house is standing still, 



With the same old porch and stately hall, 



The same old vines on the shingled wall. 



And tread once again the oaken floor 



That was worn so smooth in the daj r s of yore ; 



And the kitchen, still so strangely wide, 



With its grand old hearth along the side, 



Where the crackling piles of hickory sticks 



Have left their marks on the roughened bricks, 



And wake from its almost century sleep 



The famed old well with its mammoth sweep, 



Ah, then will memory go to her spinning, 



And carry you back to the very beginning, 



When you heard the hum of shuttle and loom 



By the mammoth hearth in that quaint old room, 



And there, as you peer 'neath the shadowy screen 



Will you see that beautiful Sewing Machine — 



Some very bewitching and buxom young girl, 



With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl ; 



And the trusty old dog asleep on the rug, 



A pitcher of cider — with more in the jug, 



While gathered around are a bevy of boys, 



Enough to get up a respectable noise, 



John, Mark, Luke and David — good puritan names 



As ever were put in vernacular frames, — 



All this, and more, caught up at a winking, 



Will set you, my friends, most delightfully thinking 



Of the plain old world that jogged so slow 



Tn the glorious days of the long ago. 



