From the Rock Island Argus, June 2, 1913.
By S. E. Kiser.
“Just to be a child again,” sighed the millionaire,
“Knowing not what woe exists, free from every care;
Just to be a child again, filled with boyish glee,
Free from all the ills I bear and from sorrows free.”
‘Round the corner lay a boy, fretting in his bed.
“Gee, I wisht I was a man,” dismally he said.
“Every season seems to bring some disease, somehow.
Had the scarlet fever last - got the measles now.
“Yes, I’ve had the chicken-pox and the jaundice, too;
‘Spose I’ll have the mumps the next - always something new;
When you’re sick there ain’t no fun, ‘cause you feel so bad;
When you’re well you go to school - gee, but life is sad!”
“Just to be a boy,” the man murmured with a sigh,
“Free to frolic as I pleased, all things yet to try;
Ah, how small men’s triumphs are, what a price we pay
For the little that we get as we scheme away.”