How Jack Found That Beans May Go Back On A Chap

Without the slightest basis     For hypochondriasis     A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung,     And with expression cynical     For half the day a clinical     Thermometer she held beneath her tongue.     Whene'er she read the papers     She suffered from the vapors,     At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan;     In every new and smart disease,     From housemaid's knee to heart disease,     She recognized the symptoms as her own!     She had a yearning chronic     To try each novel tonic,     Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm;     And from a homoeopathist     Would change to an hydropathist,     And back again, with stupefying calm!     The closets of her villa     Were full of sarsaparilla,     Ammonia, digitalis, bronchial troches, soda mint.     Restoratives hirsutical,     And soaps to clean the cuticle,     And iodine, and peptonoids, and lint.     She was nervous, cataleptic,     And anemic, and dyspeptic:     Though not convinced of apoplexy, yet she had her fears.     She dwelt with force fanatical     Upon a twinge rheumatical,     And said she had a buzzing in her ears!     Now all of this bemoaning     And this grumbling and this groaning     The mind of Jack, her son and heir, unconscionably bored.     His heart completely hardening,     He gave his time to gardening,     For raising beans was something he adored.     Each hour in accents morbid     This limp maternal bore bid     Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys.     She never granted Jack a day     Without some long "Alackaday!"     Accompanied by rolling of the eyes.     But Jack, no panic showing,     Just watched his beanstalk growing,     And twined with tender fingers the tendrils up the pole.     At all her words funereal     He smiled a smile ethereal,     Or sighed an absent-minded "Bless my soul!"     That hollow-hearted creature     Would never change a feature:     No tear bedimmed his eye, however touching was her talk.     She never fussed or flurried him,     The only thing that worried him     Was when no bean-pods grew upon the stalk!     But then he wabbled loosely     His head, and wept profusely,     And, taking out his handkerchief to mop away his tears,     Exclaimed: "It hasn't got any!"     He found this blow to botany     Was sadder than were all his mother's fears.     The Moral is that gardeners pine     Whene'er no pods adorn the vine.     Of all sad words experience gleans     The saddest are: "It might have beans."     (I did not make this up myself:     'Twas in a book upon my shelf.     It's witty, but I don't deny     It's rather Whittier than I!)