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.”