Page 32 - Poetry-Family

When I was young I used to earn
My living without trouble.
Had clothes and pocket money, too,
And hours of leisure double.

I never dreamed of such a fate,
When I, a-lass! was courted—
Wife, mother, nurse, seamstress, cook, housekeeper,
chambermaid, laundress, dairywoman, and scrub generally, doing
the work of six,
For the sake of being supported!

— Mrs. F.D. Gage (Crown Jewels, 1887)

Little Mamma

Why is it the children don’t love me
As they do mamma ?
That they put her ever above me—
“Little mamma”?
I’m sure I do all that I can do.
What more can a rather big man do,
Who can’t be mamma—
Little mamma?
Any game that the tyrants suggest,
“Logomachy,”—which I detest,
Doll-babies, hop-scotch, or base-ball,
I’m always on hand at the call.
When Noah and the others embark,
I’m the elephant saved in the ark.

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