How Hop O' My Thumb Got Rid Of An Onus

A worthy couple, man and wife,     Dragged on a discontented life:     The reason, I should state,     That it was destitute of joys,     Was that they had a dozen boys     To feed and educate,     And nothing such patience demands     As having twelve boys on your hands!     For twenty years they tried their best     To keep those urchins neatly dressed     And teach them to be good,     But so much labor it involved     That, in the end, they both resolved     To lose them in a wood,     Though nothing a parent annoys     Like heartlessly losing his boys!     So when their sons had gone to bed,     Though bitter tears the couple shed,     They laid their little plan.     "Faut b'en que a s'fasse. Quand mme,"     The woman said, "J'en suis tout' blme."     "a colle!" observed the man,     "Mais a coute, que ces gosses fichus!     B'en, quoi! Faut qu'i's soient perdus!"     (I've quite omitted to explain     That they were natives of Touraine;     I see I must translate.)     "Of course it must be done, and still,"     The wife remarked, "it makes me ill."     "You bet!" replied her mate:     "But we've both of us counted the cost,     And the kids simply have to be lost!"     But, while they plotted, every word     The youngest of the urchins heard,     And winked the other eye;     His height was only two feet three.     (I might remark, in passing, he     Was little, but O My!)     He added: "I'd better keep mum."     (He was foxy, was Hop O' My Thumb!)     They took the boys into the wood,     And lost them, as they said they should,     And came in silence back.     Alas for them! Hop O' My Thumb     At every step had dropped a crumb,     And so retraced the track.     While the parents sat mourning their fate     He led the boys in at the gate!     He placed his hand upon his heart,     And said: "You think you're awful smart,     But I have foiled you thus!"     His parents humbly bent the knee,     And meekly said: "H. O. M. T.,     You're one too much for us!"     And both of them solemnly swore     "We won't never do so no more!"     The Moral is: While I do not     Endeavor to condone the plot,     I still maintain that one     Should have no chance of being foiled,     And having one's arrangements spoiled     By one's ingenious son.     If you turn down your children, with pain,     Take care they don't turn up again!