The New Orleans Republican says the following is in general circulation in the West. It's authorship is unknown, but striking harmony of sentiment and verification has led some of our exchanges to attribute it to Wash. McLean, of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
- Air. — O. the Snow, the Beautiful Snow.
- I.
- O, the crow, the beautiful crow,
- How the quills stick as they downward go!
- Dearest diet of all, that we've got
- To swallow, whether we like it or not,
- Choking,
- Joking,
- Worrying down.
- Forcing a smile that looks more like a frown
- The unpitying Hands that go snickering by,
- Ask it it's nice, with a wink of the eye.
- Of all the tough things we have eaten they know
- There is nothing so tough as the Tildonite crow!
- II.
- Once I was not fond of raven, but now
- I prefer to any bird roosting on bough,
- Broiled prairie-chicken or canvas back roast,
- Snipe, squash, or quail upon toast.
- Turkey,
- Buzzard,
- Vulture, Owl
- All are less sweet than the primest of fowl
- Blacked, and roasted, boiled with care,
- Served on platform we didn't prepare.
- O'er it for sauce pour a bar'l or so
- Of greenbacks, and then what is sweeter than crow?
- III.
- Spread is the table, the guests they are met.
- Storey has come, though with signs of regret,
- Watterson is as Amphibryon set.
- Waiter Dorsheimer with reverence low.
- Asks, "Raven broth, sir, or purse de crow?"
- Entrees
- Crow hash
- Corbeau, roti.
- Crow pot-pie and crow salad sed,
- Wines — Old Crow, and the ladies say,
- "Fray, will you join in a game of crow-quet."
- All that are round or before us we know
- Are varieties on the single theme — Crow.
- IV.
- O, for a lodge in some wilderness vast,
- Where Storey and I could avoid this repast!
- O, that my lot with the Sioux had been cast!
- That I were sitting, not as here forlorn,
- At the small end of the Little Bighorn.
- Scalping,
- Torturing,
- Shooting Crows.
- There as my implacable foes!
- Happier far the Dakota's lot,
- Though certainly starved and probably shot,
- Let the worst come to the worst, poor Lo
- Has only to kill, not to eat his crow.
Cincinnati, July, 1876.
Oswego Daily Times 33(151): 4. Issued July 29, 1876.