Only page of title Fairly Easy
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And ripples up my backbone tel I'm tickled most to death? --
Kindo' like that sweet-sick feelin', in the long sweep of a swing,
The first you ever swung in, with yer first sweet-heart, i jing! --
Yer first picnic -- yer first ice-cream -- yer first o' _ever'thing_
'At happened 'fore yer dancin'-days wuz over!
But right in town here, yisterd'y, I heerd a pore blindman
A-fiddlin' old "Gray Eagle" -- _And_-sir! I jes stopped my load
O' hay and listened at him -- yes, and watched the way he "bow'd," --
And back I went, plum forty year', with boys and girls I knowed
And loved, long 'fore my dancin'-days wuz over! --
A-hummin' and a-screetchin' past -- and bands and G. A. R. 's
A-marchin' -- and fire-ingines. -- _All_ the noise, the whole street through,
Wuz lost on me! -- I only heerd a whipperwill er two,
It 'peared-like, kindo' callin' 'crost the darkness and the dew,
Them nights afore my dancin'-days wuz over.
Er Fourth-o'-July-night at uther Tomps's house er John's! --
With old Lew Church from Sugar Crick, with that old fiddle he
Had sawed clean through the Army, from Atlanty to the sea --
And yit he'd fetched, her home ag'in, so's he could play fer me
One't more afore my dancin'-days wuz over!
The youngsters all wuz boys ag'in 'at's now all oldish men;
And all the girls 'at _then_ wuz girls -- I saw 'em, one and all,
As _plain_ as then -- the middle-sized, the short-and-fat, and tall --
And, 'peared-like, I danced "Tucker" fer 'em up and down the wall
Jes like afore my dancin' days wuz over!
You can't use _all_ the right-o'-way! " -- fer that wuz what they said! --
But, jes the same, -- in spite of all 'at you call "interprise
And prog-gress of _you_-folks Today," we're all of _fambly-ties_ --
We're all got feelin's fittin' fer the _tears_ 'at's in our eyes
Er the _smiles_ afore our dancin'-days is over.
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