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<h2 id="JIM_BLUDSO">JIM BLUDSO.</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Wall, no! I can't tell where he lives, Because he don't live, you see: Leastways, he's got out of the habit Of livin' like you and me. Whar have you been for the last three years, That you haven't heard folks tell How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks, The night of the "Prairie Belle"? </div> <div class="stanza"> He warn't no saint—them engineers Is all pretty much alike— One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill, And another one here, in Pike. A careless man in his talk was Jim, And an awkward man in a row— But he never pinked, and he never lied, I reckon he never knowed how. </div> <div class="stanza"> And this was all the religion he had— To treat his engine well; Never be passed on the river; To mind the pilot's bell;[98] And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire, A thousand times he swore He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last soul got ashore. </div> <div class="stanza"> All boats has their day on the Mississip'. And her day came at last— The Movastar was a better boat, But the Belle, she wouldn't be passed, And so came tearin' along that night, The oldest craft on the line, With a nigger squat on her safety-valve, And her furnaces crammed, rosin and pine. </div> <div class="stanza"> The fire bust out as she clared the bar, And burnt a hole in the night, And quick as a flash she turned, and made For that willer-bank on the right. There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out Over all the infernal roar, "I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last galoot's ashore." </div> <div class="stanza"> Thro' the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat Jim Bludso's voice was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness, And know'd he would keep his word. And sure's you're born, they all got off Afore the smoke-stacks fell, And Bludso's ghost went up alone In the smoke of the Prairie Belle. </div> <div class="stanza"> He warn't no saint—but at judgment I'd run my chance with Jim 'Longside of some pious gentlemen That wouldn't shook hands with him.[99] He'd seen his duty a dead sure thing, And went for it thar and then; And Christ ain't a-goin' to be too hard On a man that died for men. </div> <div class="stanza"> Colonel John Hay. </div> </div> <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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