A Day at Benton's Barn.
It were no book of mine, did it not contain some allusion to the noble art of "rat catching." The subjoined effusion being in as mild a form as anything I have ever penned on that subject, I am induced to insert it.
Farmer Benton had written Ned Perkins to say,
That he purposed on Friday to thrash out a bay;
That he'd sent to George Haynes, about ferrets, and so
They expected on Friday to have a grand go.
The morning is come, the machine got in motion,
Which rather beats thrashing by hand, I've a notion;
The chaff in a simoon of dust floats along,
And the team do their work to the waggoner's song.
George's outposts well guarded, the shindy begins,
At the expense of rat's lives and the countrymen's shins;
"Don't trample the wheat out," says Benton, "I pray,
There's no sort of hurry—they can't get away."
