From the Rock Island Argus, November 14, 1912. By Duncan M. Smith. I always want to read a book When I have work on hand. A most alluring volume then Is lying on the stand. If I have nothing on my mind And work is rather slack The selfsame book a week can lie Unopened on the rack. How tempting when I ought to be So busy making hay Is any book that happens to By lying in my way! I want to cast my pen aside And take a furtive look For just about a half an hour In that alluring book. It doesn’t matter to me what The volume is about. It may be poetry or prose, A treatise on the gout, A little book on fancy work, On how to till the land, Just so it serves to turn me from The work I have in hand. But that is not the worst of it— Oh, no, that isn’t all!— For when temptation thus appears The truth is that I fall. Nor do I read for half an hour And then the covers bang— I keep it up for half a day And let the work go hang!