Poetry: Aunt Shaw's Pet Jug

AUNT SHAW’S PET JUG
by Holman F. Day
from UP IN MAINE (Published 1907, Pages 3-5)

Now there was Uncle Elnathan Shaw,
– Most regular man you ever saw !
Just half-past four in the afternoon
He’d start and whistle that old jig tune,
Take the big blue jug from the but’ry shelf
And trot down cellar, to draw himself
Old cider enough to last him through
The winter ev’nin’. Two quarts would do.
– Just as regular as half-past four
Come round, he’d tackle that cellar door,
As he had for thutty years or more.
And as regular, too, as he took that jug
Aunt Shaw would yap through her old cross mug,
“Now, Nathan, for goodness’ sake take care !
You allus trip on the second stair ;
It seems as though you were just possessed
To break that jug. It’s the very best
There is in town and you know it, too.
And ’twas left to me by my great-aunt Sue.
For goodness’ sake, why don’t yer lug
A tin dish down, for ye’ll break that jug ?”
Allus the same, suh, for thirty years,
Allus the same old twits and jeers
Slammed for the nineteenth thousand time
And still we wonder, my friend, at crime.
But Nathan took it meek’s a pup
And the worst he said was “Please shut up.”
You know what the Good Book says befell
The pitcher that went to the old-time well;
Wal, whether ’twas that or his time had come,
Or his stiff old limbs got weak and numb
Or whether his nerves at last giv’ in
To Aunt Shaw’s everlasting chin –
One day he slipped on that second stair,
Whirled round and grabbed at the empty air
And clean to the foot of them stairs, ker-smack,
He bumped on the bulge of his humped old back
And he’d hardly finished the final bump
When old Aunt Shaw she giv’ a jump
And screamed downstairs as mad’s a bug
“Dod-rot your hide, did ye break my jug?”
Poor Uncle Nathan lay there flat
Knocked in the shape of an old cocked hat,
But he rubbed his legs, brushed off the dirt
And found after all that he warn’t much hurt.
And he’d saved the jug, for his last wild thought
Had been of that; he might have caught
At the cellar shelves and saved his fall,
But he kept his hands on the jug through all.
And now as he loosed his jealous hug
His wife just screamed, “Did ye break my jug?”
Not a single word for his poor old bones
Nor a word when she heard his awful groans,
But the blamed old hard-shelled turkle just
Wanted to know if that jug was bust.
Old Uncle Nathan he let one roar
And he shook his fist at the cellar door;
“Did ye break my jug?” she was yellin’ still.
“No, durn yer pelt, but I swow I will.”
And you’d thought that the house was a-going to fall
When the old jug smashed on the cellar wall.