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 seances, 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!"—don't believe it! Well, good-by! That's Patience Worth there on the phone!