As rapidly as the WWW has developed it is rare to find an opportunity to post VIRGIN material from a previously published source. Google don't have this piece… nor does Grange's Index to Poetry…nor any other immediately available source. Therefore, an incantation has resurrected the spirits of my Uncle and Grandfather and my 4th Grade Teacher…..to bring you...
INDEPENDENT
FOURTH READER
CONTAINING
A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON ELOCUTION, ILLUSTRATED
WITH DIAGRAMS: SELECT AND CLASSIFIED
READINGS AND RECITATIONS; WITH
COPIOUS NOTES, AND COMPLETE
SUPPLEMENTARY INDEX.
By J. MADISON WATSON,
Author of the National and the Independent Readers, Spellers and Primers: The
Hand-Book of Gymnastics: The Manual of Calisthenics: Tables, etc.
A. S. B A R N E S & C O M P A N Y
NEW YORK, 7 CHICAGOcopyright 1868, 1876, 1890
page 243, IV, 96.
TOM TWIST
TOM TWIST was a wonderful fellow,
No boy was so nimble and strong;
He could turn ten somersets backward,
And stand on his head all day long.
No wrestling, or leaping, or running,
This tough little urchin could tire;
His muscles were all gutta-percha,
And his sinews bundles of wire.
Tom Twist liked the life of a sailor,
So off, with a hop and a skip,
Hew went to a Nantucket captain,
Who took him on board of his ship,
The vessel was crowded with seamen,
Young, old, stout and slim, short and tall,
But in climbing, swinging and jumpin,
Tom Twist was ahead of them all.
He could scamper all through the rigging,
As spry and as still as a cat,
While as for a leap from the maintop
To deck, he thought nothing of that:
He danced at the end of the yard-arm,
Slept sound in the bend of a sail,
And hung by his legs from the bowsprit,
When the wind was blowing a gale.
The vessel went down in a tempest,
A thousand fathoms or more;
But Tom Twist dive under the breakers,
And, swimming five mile, got ashore.
The shore was a cannibal island,
The natives were hungry enough ;
But they felt of Tommy all over,
And found him entirely too tough.
So they put him into a boy-coop-
Just to fatten him up, you see –
But Tommy crept out, very slyly,
And climbed to the top of a tree.
The tree was the nest of a condor,
A bird with prodigious big wing,
Which live up boa-constrictors
And other digestible things.
The condor flew home in the evening,
And there lay friend Tommy so snug,
She thought she had pounced on a very
Remarkable species of bug;
She soon woke him up with her pecking,
But Tommy gave one of his springs,
And leaped on the back of the condor,
]Between her long neck and her wings.
The condor tried plunging and pitching,
But Tommy held on with firm hand,
Then off, with a scream, flew the condor,
O'er forest and ocean and land.
By and by, she got tired of her burden,
And flying quite close to the ground
Tom untwisted his legs from the creature,
And quickly slipped off with bound.
He landed all right, and feet foremost,
A little confused by his fall,
And then ascertained he had alight
On top of the great Chinese Wall.
He walked to city of Pekin,
Where he made the Chinamen grin:
He turned ten somersets backward,
And they made him a Mandarin.
The Tom had to play the Celestial
And dangle a long pigtail;
And he dined on puppies and kittens,
Till his spirits began to fail.
He sighed for his native country,
And he longed for its ham and eggs;
And in turning somersets backward
His pigtail would catch in his legs.He sailed for his dear home and harbor.
The house of his mother he knew;
He climbed up the lightning-rod quickly,
And came down the chimney-flue.
His mother in slumber lay dreaming
That she never would see him more,
When she opened her eyes, and Tommy
Stood there in the bedroom floor!
Her nightcap flew off in amazement,
Her hair stood on end with surprise.
"What kind of ghost or a spirit
Is this that I see with my eyes?" –
"I am your most dutiful Tommy."
"I will not believe it," she said,
"Till you turn ten somersets backward,
And stand half on hour on your head."
"That thing I will do, dearest mother."
At once with a skip and a hop,
He turned the ten somersets backward,
But then was unable to stop!
The tenth took him out of the window,
His mother jumped from her bed,
To see his twentieth somerset
Take him over the kitchen shed;
Thence, across the patch of potatoes
And beyond the church on the hill'
She saw him tumbling turning
Turn and tumbling still –
Till Tommy's body diminished
In size to the head of a pin,
Spinning away in the distance
Where it still continues to spin!
Sincerely,
Gargoyle