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Show No-good Plow 7 Which is true enough, if you're not too tight, For he put it under his head most every night; But the country folk are pretty hard to trick, And there was more than one who hoped to get A plowshare's worth of gold for the price of a stick Applied with vigor to the side of Alvin's head; And many a night young Alvin had to run From the bowie knife or buckshot-loaded gun Of some mother's son. While Alvin was a-beatin country traces Comes Verily Cooper, a handiworkin man, Who boards wherever there's barrels to make or mend, And never did he find so fine a place, So nice a folk nor never so pretty a face That he'd put away his walkin boots and stay. It happened that he come to the smith one day And heard that Alvin made his golden plow And wondered how. So off he set with boots so sad and xvorn And socks so holey that his soles were torn And he left a little track of blood sometimes- Off set Verily Cooper, hopin to find What tales were envy and what tales were true, What the journeyman blacksmith did or didn't do. He asked in every inn, "Did a boy with a bag Come here, a brown-haired boy so long of leg, About this big?" Well, it happened that the findin all was done On a day without a single speck of sun. Young Alvin, he come down to the bottom lands, Where the air was cold and the fog was thick and white. "In a fog this deep you'd better count your hands," Said an unseen man a-waitin by the track. "What could I see if a man had any sight?" And the unseen speaker said, "That the sun is bright And the soil is black." Now Alvin knelt and touched the dirt of the road, But the ground was packed and he couldn't feel it deep, And though he fairly pressed his nose to the dirt, Still the white of the fog was all he could see. "The soil, it doesn't look so black to me." And the unseen speaker said, "The earth is hurt And hides in the fog and heals while its asleep. For the tree, she screamed and wept when the beaver gnawed And no one knowed." |