THE OVERWORKED GHOST

When the embalmer closed my eyes,

And all the family went in black,

And shipped me off to Paradise,

I had no thought of coming back;

I dreamed of undisturbed repose

Until the Judgment Day went crack,

Tucked safely in from top to toes.

“I've done my bit,” I said. “I've earned

The right to take things at my ease!”

When folk declared the dead returned,

I called it all tomfooleries.

“They are too glad to get to bed,

To stretch their weary limbs in peace;

Done with it all — the lucky dead!”

But scarcely had I laid me down,

When comes a voice: “Is that you, Joe?

I'm calling you from Williamstown!

Knock once for‘ yes,’ and twice for‘ no.’”

Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two —

The table shook, I banged it so —

“Not Joe!” they said, “Then tell us who?

“We're waiting — is there no one here,

No friend, you have a message for?”

But I pretended not to hear.

“Perhaps he fell in the great war?”

“Perhaps he's German?” someone said;

“How goes it on the other shore?”

“That's no way to address the dead!”

And so they talked, till I got sore,

And made the blooming table rock,

And ribald oaths and curses swore,

And strange words guaranteed to shock.

“He's one of those queer spooks they call

A poltergeist — the ghosts that mock,

Throw things —” said one, who knew it all.

“I wish an old thigh-bone was round

To break your silly head!” I knocked.

“A humourist of the burial-ground!”

A bright young college graduate mocked.

Then a young girl fell in a trance,

And foamed: “Get out — we are deadlocked —

And give some other ghost a chance!”

Such was my first night in the tomb,

Where soft sleep was to hold me fast;

I little knew my weary doom!

It even makes a ghost aghast

To think of all the years in store —

The slave, as long as death shall last,

To ouija-boards forevermore.

For morning, noon, and night they call!

Alive, some fourteen hours a day

I worked, but now I work them all.

No sooner down my head I lay,

A lady writer knocks me up

About a novel or a play,

Nor gives me time for bite or sup.

I hear her damned typewriter click

With all the things she says I say,

You'd think the public would get sick;

And that's my only hope — some day!

Then séances, each night in dozens

I must attend, their parts to play

For dead grandpas and distant cousins.

O for my life to live again!

I'd know far better than to die;

You'd never hear me once complain,

Could I but see the good old sky,

For here they work me to the bone;

“Rest!” — do n't believe it! Well, good-by!

That's Patience Worth there on the phone!