My happy days are past, The mines have failed at last, The cañons and gulches no longer will pay, There's nothin left for me, I'll never, never see My happy, happy home far away.
Chorus: Oh, happy home, now where art thou, Friends that were kind and sincere? Alas, I do not know, my heart is full of woe, Thinking of loved ones so dear.
I mine from break of day, But cannot make it pay, Disheartened return to my cabin at night, Where rattlesnakes crawl round My bed made on the ground, And coiling up, lay ready to bite.
Chorus
My poor old leaky hump Is always cold and damp; My blanket is covered with something that crawls, My bread will never rise, My coffee-pot capsize, I'd rather live inside of prison walls.
Chorus
My boots are full of holes, Like merchants, have no soles; My hands, once so soft, are harder than stone; My pants and woolen shirt Are only rags and dirt; And must I live and die here alone?
Chorus
I know how miners feel When pigs begin to squeal, Or hens on their roosts to cackle and squall; It makes by blood run cond To think it's all for gold, And often wish that Gabriel would call!
Chorus
It's "Starve or pay the dust," For merchants will not trust, And then in the summer the diggings are dry; Of course then I am broke, Swelled up by poison oak; It's even so, I really would not lie.
Chorus
I've lived on pork and beans, Through all those trying scenes,, So long I dare not look a hog in the face; And often do I dream Of custard pies and cream; But really it is a quien sabe case.
Chorus
If I were home again, To see green fields of grain, And all kinds of fruit hanging ripe on the trees; I there would live and die, The gold mines bid good-by- Forever free from bed-bugs and fleas.
Chorus
Pp. 36-38, John A. Stone, 1858, "Put's Golden Songster." D. E. Appleton & Co., San Francisco. UMI facsimile reprint, 2004.