Yawcob Strauss and Other Poems/Yankee Shrewdness

by Charles Follen Adams

YANKEE SHREWDNESS.

In a little country village,

Not many years ago,

There lived a real "live Yankee,"

Whom they called "Old Uncle Snow."

In trade he had no equal;

And storekeepers would say,

"We're always 'out of pocket'

When Snow comes round this way."

'Twas the custom of the villagers —

Few of them being rich —

To trade their surplus "garden-sass"

For groceries and " sich."

One store supplied the village

With goods of every kind,

Including wines and liquors

For those that way inclined.

A counter in the "sample-room"

Was fixed up very neat;

And after every "barter-trade"

The storekeeper would "treat."

Old Snow brought in, one morning,

An egg fresh from the barn,

And said, "Give me a needle:

My woman wants to darn."

The trade was made: the storekeeper

Asked him to take a drink.

"I'll humor him," he said, aside,

As the lookers-on did wink.

"Don't care, naow, ef I do," says Snow;

"And, as your goin' to treat,

Just put a leetle sugar in,—

I like my liquor sweet.

"And, say, while you're about it, —

Though I don't like to beg,—

'Twill taste a leetle better

If you drop in an egg."

"All right, friend," says the grocer,

Now being fairly "caught,"

And dropped into the tumbler

The egg that Snow had brought!

The egg contained a double yolk.

Says Snow, "Here, this won't do:

Give me another needle, 'Squire;

This egg's the same as two!"