JIM BLUDSO. JOHN HAY.
Reading edition
John Hay, Secretary of State, was born at Salem, Ind., on Oct. 8, 1838, and he was graduated at Brown twenty years later. He studied law in Springfield, Ill., and in 1861 became assistant secretary to President Lincoln. He saw some of the civil war as an aid-de-camp under Generals Hunter and Gilmore, with rank of Major and Assistant Adjutant General, Brevet Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel. He was First Assistant Secretary of Legation in Paris and in charge several times from 1865 to 1867, was diplomat in charge at Vienna 1867–’68, Secretary of Legation at Madrid 1868–’70, editorial writer for five years of the New York Tribune, First Assistant Secretary of State, and Ambassador to England. He is the author of “Pike County Ballads,” “Castillian Days,” and part author of a life of Lincoln, written in conjunction with John G. Nicolay.
Wall no! I can’t tell where he lives Because he don’t live, you see; Leastways he’s got out of the habit Of livin’ like you and me. Whar have you been for the last three years, That you haven’t heard folks tell How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks The night of the Prairie Belle?
He weren’t no saint—them engineers Is all pretty much alike— One wife in Natchez-Under-the-Hill And another one here in Pike; A keerless man in his talk was Jim, And an awkward man in a row, But he never flunked and he never lied— I reckon he never knowed how.
And this was all the religion he had— To treat his engine well; Never be passed on the river; To mind the pilot’s bell; And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire— A thousand times he swore He’d hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Mississipp, And her day come at last— The Movastar was a better boat, But the Belle she wouldn’t be passed, And so she come tearin’ along that night— The oldest craft on the line— With a nigger squat on her safety-valve And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.
The fire bust out as she clared the bar, And burnt a hole in the night, And quick as a flash she turned, and made For that willer bank on the right. There was runnin’ and cursin’, but Jim yelled out, Over all the infernal roar, “I’ll hold her nozzle agin the bank Till the last galoot’s ashore.”
Through the hot, black breath of the burnin’ boat Jim Bludso’s voice was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness, And know’d he would keep his word, And, sure’s you’re born they all got off Afore the smokestacks fell— And Bludso’s ghost went up alone In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.
He weren’t no saint—but at jedgment I’d run my chance with Jim, ’Longside of some pious gentlemen That wouldn’t shook hands with him. He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing— And went for it thar and then; And Christ ain’t a-going to be too hard On a man that died for men.