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James Whitcomb Riley - George Mullen`s Confession
Work rating: Low

For the sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the
time
Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I`m
A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk
The last five years and better.  It ain`t worth while to talk--

I`ve been too mean to tell it!  I`ve been so hard, you see,
And full of pride, and--onry--now there`s the word for me--
Just onry--and to show you, I`ll give my history
With vital points in question, and I think you`ll all agree.

I was always stiff and stubborn since I could recollect,
And had an awful temper, and never would reflect;
And always into trouble--I remember once at school
The teacher tried to flog me, and I reversed that rule.

O I was bad I tell you!  And it`s a funny move
That a fellow wild as I was could ever fall in love;
And it`s a funny notion that an animal like me,
Under a girl`s weak fingers was as tame as tame could be!

But it`s so, and sets me thinking of the easy way she had
Of cooling down my temper--though I`d be fighting mad.
"My Lion Queen" I called her--when a spell of mine occurred
She`d come in a den of feelings and quell them with a word.

I`ll tell you how she loved me--and what her people thought:
When I asked to marry Annie they said "they reckoned not--
That I cut too many didoes and monkey-shines to suit
Their idea of a son-in-law, and I could go, to boot!"

I tell you that thing riled me!  Why, I felt my face turn white,
And my teeth shut like a steel trap, and the fingers of my right
Hand pained me with their pressure--all the rest`s a mystery
Till I heard my Annie saying--"I`m going, too, you see."

We were coming through the gateway, and she wavered for a spell
When she heard her mother crying and her raving father yell
That she wa`n`t no child of his`n--like an actor in a play
We saw at Independence, coming through the other day.

Well! that`s the way we started.  And for days and weeks and
months
And even years we journeyed on, regretting never once
Of starting out together upon the path of life--
Akind o` sort o` husband, but a mighty loving wife,--

And the cutest little baby--little Grace--I see her now
A-standin` on the pig-pen as her mother milked the cow--
And I can hear her shouting--as I stood unloading straw,--
"I`m ain`t as big as papa, but I`m biggerest`n ma."

Now folks that never married don`t seem to understand
That a little baby`s language is the sweetest ever planned--
Why, I tell you it`s pure music, and I`ll just go on to say
That I sometimes have a notion that the angels talk that way!

There`s a chapter in this story I`d be happy to destroy;
I could burn it up before you with a mighty sight of joy;
But I`ll go ahead and give it--not in detail, no, my friend,
For it takes five years of reading before you find the end.

My Annie`s folks relented--at least, in some degree;
They sent one time for Annie, but they didn`t send for me.
The old man wrote the message with a heart as hot and dry
As a furnace--"Annie Mullen, come and see your mother die."

I saw the slur intended--why I fancied I could see
The old man shoot the insult like a poison dart at me;
And in that heat of passion I swore an inward oath
That if Annie pleased her father she could never please us both.

I watched her--dark and sullen--as she hurried on her shawl;
I watched her--calm and cruel, though I saw her tear-drops fall;
I watched her--cold and heartless, though I heard her moaning,
call
For mercy from high Heaven--and I smiled throughout it all.

Why even when she kissed me, and her tears were on my brow,
As she murmured, "George, forgive me--I must go to mother now!"
Such hate there was within me that I answered not at all,
But calm, and cold and cruel, I smiled throughout it all.

But a shadow in the doorway caught my eye, and then the face
Full of innocence and sunshine of little baby Grace.
And I snatched her up and kissed her, and I softened through and
through
For a minute when she told me "I must kiss her muvver too."

I remember, at the starting, how I tried to freeze again
As I watched them slowly driving down the little crooked lane--
When Annie shouted something that ended in a cry,
And how I tried to whistle and it fizzled in a sigh.

I remember running after, with a glimmer in my sight--
Pretending I`d discovered that the traces wasn`t right;
And the last that I remember, as they disappeared from view,
Was little Grace a-calling, "I see papa!  Howdy-do!"

And left alone to ponder, I again took up my hate
For the old man who would chuckle that I was desolate;
And I mouthed my wrongs in mutters till my pride called up the
pain
His last insult had given me--until I smiled again

Till the wild beast in my nature was raging in the den--
With no one now to quell it, and I wrote a letter then
Full of hissing things, and heated with so hot a heat of hate
That my pen flashed out black lightning at a most terrific rate.

I wrote that "she had wronged me when she went away from me--
Though to see her dying mother `twas her father`s victory,
And a woman that could waver when her husband`s pride was rent
Was no longer worthy of it."  And I shut the house and went.

To tell of my long exile would be of little good--
Though I couldn`t half-way tell it, and I wouldn`t if I could!
I could tell of California--of a wild and vicious life;
Of trackless plains, and mountains, and the Indian`s
scalping-knife.

I could tell of gloomy forests howling wild with threats of
death;
I could tell of fiery deserts that have scorched me with their
breath;
I could tell of wretched outcasts by the hundreds, great and
small,
And could claim the nasty honor of the greatest of them all.

I could tell of toil and hardship; and of sickness and disease,
And hollow-eyed starvation, but I tell you, friend, that these
Are trifles in comparison with what a fellow feels
With that bloodhound, Remorsefulness, forever at his heels.

I remember--worn and weary of the long, long years of care,
When the frost of time was making early harvest of my hair--
I remember, wrecked and hopeless of a rest beneath the sky,
My resolve to quit the country, and to seek the East, and die.

I remember my long journey, like a dull, oppressive dream,
Across the empty prairies till I caught the distant gleam
Of a city in the beauty of its broad and shining stream
On whose bosom, flocked together, float the mighty swans of
steam.

I remember drifting with them till I found myself again
In the rush and roar and rattle of the engine and the train;
And when from my surroundings something spoke of child and wife,
It seemed the train was rumbling through a tunnel in my life.

Then I remember something--like a sudden burst of light--
That don`t exactly tell it, but I couldn`t tell it right--
A something clinging to me with its arms around my neck--
A little girl, for instance--or an angel, I expect--

For she kissed me, cried and called me "her dear papa," and I
felt
My heart was pure virgin gold, and just about to melt--
And so it did--it melted in a mist of gleaming rain
When she took my hand and whispered, "My mama`s on the train."

There`s some things I can dwell on, and get off pretty well,
But the balance of this story I know I couldn`t tell;
So I ain`t going to try it, for to tell the reason why--
I`m so chicken-hearted lately I`d be certain `most to cry.
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