Eaton Weekly Democrat

TRAGEDY OF TRAVEL,

BY ROBERTUS BURDETTONIUS.

Canto Primus.

Pete was a tip-top baggageman, he ran on Number Four
Where the tears and groans
of traveling folks un-
flinchingly he bore.
He cared not how the women wept, or strong men
swore,
While he mutilated sample cases, desolated Sarato-
gas, annihilated ordinary luggage, immolated
carpet-bags, exterminated band-boxes, and
extinguished travelers' outfits by the score.
This fine old railway baggage-man, one of
the modern time.

Canto Secundus.

But Thursday afternoon there came a modest travel-
ing man,
Who smiled and watched how ruthlessly the baggage
Pete did slam;
Then, as he pointed out his trunk for him to mash
and jam,
He said: "Dear friend, my worldly possessions are
few and humble; silver and gold I have none,
but such as I have are in that trunk. Handle
it tenderly, for it is frail and I am poor, and
if there's a man traveling who watches and
weeps, and prays over his baggage, then that's
the kind of a man I am."

(Chorus the same as before.)

Canto Tertius.

But Pete seized his shabby trunk with snorts of
wrath and scorn,
And in two seconds both the handles from the ends
had torn,
And heedless of the pleadings of the passenger for-
lorn
He
banged the trunk down on the platform, and
then threw it over the top of the car and let an
omnibus run over it, and then whacked it a
bumper, and threw it off the end of the bridge
and shot into it with his revolver, and finally
hugged it in his arms, took a flying leap into
the baggage-car with it, and lit on it in a cor-
ner with his heels, head and stomach, and
mashed it into more pieces than there are
hairs on a dog's back, and the next second
that baggage-car was just alive with one inter-
esting baggage-man
and more crawling,
squirming, wriggling, rattling, coiling rattle-
snakes than you would believe had ever been
born.

(Chorus as previously, but with more feel-
ing.)

Canto Quartus.

In
vain the muse essays to
tell how Pete, the
smasher, swore.
And yelled and shrieked and howled and roared and
raved and stamped and tore,
And scratched and slashed and sweat and struck
and scrambled for the door.
And turned blue as indigo, and swelled up to nine
times the size of a double-decker Saratoga
trunk, and died in two minutes after he got
out of the car, while the modest traveler,
viewing his exaggerated remains, smiled sadly
and said, "he never knew a baggage-man so
fond of snakes before."

(Chorus ad lib.)