Newspaper History presents media sourced from a United States newspaper dating back 108 years.

  • Just to Be a Boy Again

    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.”