Backbone.

To dress, and sit, and walk genteelly,
To bow with easy grace;
To speak in accents soft and mealy,
To wear a studied face;
These, and like goodly gifts and graces,
Are well enough, I own;
But what we want in this soft age,
Is bone, backbone!

A heart to feel, a mind to think,
Despite each base control;
A tongue to speak, a hand to work
The purpose of the soul:
By these and other goodly tokens
It may be surely known,
If this or that, within his body
Has* bone, backbone!

Give me a man that's all a man,
Who stands up straight and strong,
Who loves the plain and simple right,
And will not yield to wrong;
Who deals with firm, untrembling hand,
Gives every one his own—
O! a blessed thing in anybody,
Is bone, backbone!

Put's Original California Songster, p. 64

Not found in Dwyer & Lingenfelter, The Songs of the Gold Rush


*middle letter is illegible - could be "his bone," but "has" makes more sense to me.

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