Whene'er she read the papers

She suffered from the vapors,

At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan;

In every new and smart disease,

From housemaid's knee to heart disease,

She recognized the symptoms as her own!

She had a yearning chronic

To try each novel tonic,

Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm;

And from a homeopathist

Would change to an hydropathist,

And back again, with stupefying calm!

She was nervous, cataleptic,

And anemic, and dyspeptic:

Though not convinced of apoplexy, yet she had her

fears.

She dwelt with force fanatical,

Upon a twinge rheumatical,

And said she had a buzzing in her ears!

Now all of this bemoaning

And this grumbling and this groaning

The mind of Jack, her son and heir, unconscionably bored.

His heart completely hardening,

He gave his time to gardening,

For raising beans was something he adored.

Each hour in accents morbid

This limp maternal bore bid

Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys.

She never granted Jack a day

Without some long "Alackaday!"

Accompanied by rolling of the eyes.

But Jack, no panic showing,

Just watched his beanstalk growing,

And twined with tender fingers the tendrils up the

pole.

At all her words funereal

He smiled a smile ethereal,

Or sighed an absent-minded "Bless my soul!"

That hollow-hearted creature

Would never change a feature:

No tear bedimmed his eye, however touching was her

talk.

She never fussed or flurried him,

The only thing that worried him

Was when no bean-pods grew upon the stalk!

But then he wabbled loosely

His head, and wept profusely,

And, taking out his handkerchief to mop away his

tears,

Exclaimed: "It hasn't got any!"

He found this blow to botany

Was sadder than were all his mother's fears.

The Moral is that gardeners pine
Whene'er no pods adorn the vine.
Of all sad words experience gleans
The saddest are: "It might have beans."
(I did not make this up myself:
'Twas in a book upon my shelf.
It's witty, but I don't deny
It's rather Whittier than I!)

Harry Herbert Knibbs was born at Niagara Falls, October 24, 1874. After a desultory schooling, he actended Harvard for three years when he was thirty-four. "Somebody said I took honors in English," says Knibbs, "but I never saw them." He wrote his first book, Lost Farm Camp, a novel, as a class exercise. In 1911, Knibbs settled in Los Angeles, California, where he has lived ever since.

In Riders of the Stars (1916) and Songs of the Trail (1920), Knibbs carries on the tradition of Bret Harte and the Pike County Ballads. High-hearted verse this is, with more than an occasional flash of poetry. To the typical Western breeziness, Knibbs adds a wider whimsicality, a rough-shod but nimble imagination.

THE VALLEY THAT GOD FORGOT

Out in the desert spaces, edged by a hazy blue,
Davison sought the faces of the long-lost friends he
knew:

They were there, in the distance dreaming
Their dreams that were worn and old;
They were there, to his frenzied seeming,
Still burrowing down for gold.

Davison's face was leather; his mouth was a swollen

blot,

His mind was a floating feather, in The Valley That God Forgot;

Wild as a dog gone loco,

Or sullen or meek, by turns,
He mumbled a "Poco! Poco!"
And whispered of pools and ferns.

Gold! Why his, for the finding! But water was never

found,

Save in deep caverns winding miles through the under

ground:

Cool, far, shadowy places
Edged by the mirrored trees,
When-Davison saw the faces!

And fear let loose his knees.

There was Shorty who owed him money, and Billing who bossed the crowd;

And Steve whom the boys called "Sunny," and Collins who talked so loud:

Miguel with the handsome daughter,
And the rustler, Ed McCray;
Five-and they begged for water,

And offered him gold, in pay.

Gold? It was never cheaper. And Davison shook his head:

"The price of a drink is steeper out here than in town,"

he said.

He laughed as they mouthed and muttered
Through lips that were cracked and dried;
The pulse in his ear-drum fluttered:
"I'm through with the game!" he cried.

"I'm through!" And he knelt and fumbled the cap of his dry canteen

Then, rising, he swayed and stumbled into a black ravine:

His ghostly comrades followed,
For Davison's end was near,

And a shallow grave they hollowed,

When up from it, cool and clear

Bubbled the water-hidden a pick-stroke beneath the

sand;

Davison, phantom-ridden, scooped with a shaking

hand . . .

Davison swears they made it,
The Well where we drank today.
Davison's game? He played it

And won-so the town-folk say:

Called it, The Morning-Glory-near those abandoned stamps,

And Davison's crazy story was told in a hundred camps: Time and the times have tamed it,

His yarn-and this desert spot,

But I'm strong for the man who named it,
The Valley That God Forgot.

Anna Hempstead Branch

Anna Hempstead Branch was born at New London, Connecticut. She graduated from Smith College in 1897 and has devoted herself to literature ever since.

Her two chief volumes, The Shoes That Danced (1905) and Rose of the Wind (1910), show a singer who is less fanciful than philosophic. Her lines are admirably condensed, rich in personal value as well as poetic revelation; they maintain a high and austere level. A typical poem, "The Monk in the Kitchen," with its spiritual loveliness and verbal felicity, is a celebration of cleanness that gives order an almost mystical nobility.

THE MONK IN THE KITCHEN

I

Order is a lovely thing;
On disarray it lays its wing,
Teaching simplicity to sing.
It has a meek and lowly grace,