JIM BLUDSO.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 9, 9 January 1913, Page 7

JIM BLUDSO.

Oh THE ‘THAI HIE BELLE.” From the poem by the late John Hay. He Averen’t no saint—-them engineers Is all pretty much alike, — One wife in Natchez-under-thc-Hill And another one here in Pike; A keerless man in his talk Avas Jim, And an aAvkward hand in a roAV, But he never flunked, and he never lied— I reckon he never knowed lioav. And this was all the religion he had— To treat his engine well; Never be passed on the river, To mind the pilot’s boll; And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire, A thousand times ho swore He’d hold her nose agin the bank Till the last soul got ashore. All boats lias their day on the Mississip, And her day came at last, — The Movastar was a better boat, But the Belle she wouldn’t be passed. (And so she came tearing along that night— The oldest craft on the lino—•With a nigger squat on her safetyAnd her furnace crammed, rosin and pine. Through the hot black smoko of the burnin’ boat Jim Bludso’s voice Avas hoard, And they all had trust in his cussedness, , . , And knowed lie would keep lu« word. And, sure ns you’re born, they ni got olf Afore the smokestacks fell— And Bludso’s ghost went up alone In the smoke of the Prairie Belie.