From The Poets and Poetry of Texas by Samuel Houston Dixon (Austin, Tex., S.H. Dixon & Co., 1885):


MY GIRL WITH A CALICO DRESS.
Robert Josselyn

A fig for your upper-ten girls,
With their velvets, and satin, and laces,
Their diamonds, and rubies, and pearls,
And millinery figures and faces;
They may shine at a party or ball,
Emblazoned with half they possess,
But give me, instead of them all,
My girl with the calico dress.

She's as plump as a partridge, and fair
As a rose in its earliest bloom;
Her teeth will with ivory compare,
And her breath with the clover perfume;
Her step is as free and as light
As the fawn's, when the hunter hard press;
And her eye is as soft and as bright—
My girl with the calico dress.

Your dandies and foplings may jeer
At her modest and simple attire;
But the charms she permits to appear
Would set a whole iceberg on fire:
She can dance, but she never allows
The hugging, the squeeze and caress,
She is saving all these for her spouse—
My girl with the calico dress.

She is cheerful, warm-hearted, and true,
And kind to her father and mother:
She studies how much she can do
For her sweet little sister and brother.
If you want a companion for life,
To comfort, enliven, and bless,
She is just the right sort for a wife—
My girl with a calico dress.

*
ROBERT JOSSELYN was born in Massachusetts, 1810, educated in Vermont, and admitted to the bar at Winchester, Virginia, 1831. He then immigrated to Mississippi, where he practiced law, served in the Legislature, was District Attorney, and for a while engaged in journalism. He entered the Mexican War as private in First Mississippi Rifles, with Col. Jefferson Davis, but was appointed Captain and Commissary by President Polk. At the expiration of term of service he resigned; was State Commissioner of Mississippi 1850 to 1858; and in Treasury Department, Washington, 1860, but resigned when Mississippi seceded. President Davis appointed him his private secretary at Montgomery, but he resigned after one year's service, on account of ill health, and was made Secretary of Arizona Territory, as organized under the Confederacy. Since the war he has resided in Texas, at Austin. His published works are The Faded Flower and Other Poems, Boston, 1848; A Satire on the Times, St. Louis, 1875; and The Coquette, a drama in five acts, Austin, 1878. He is author of many fugitive poems, two of which—The Girl with a Calico Dress and The Young Widow—have kept their places in the newspapers for more than twenty-five years, though rarely credited to the author.

For some years Mr. Josselyn was connected with the Democratic Statesman, Austin. In 1878 he started a daily paper at Austin, but it fell through after a short life. His writings are generally upon questions of the day, and they are characterized by practical good sense; a compliment rarely to be paid to a man of so varied attainments. January, 1883, when Hon. John Ireland was installed Governor of Texas, Mr. Josselyn accepted a clerkship in the executive office, where he remained until his death, which occurred of pneumonia in 1884. He lived a bachelor—having never been married.

Mr. Josselyn had many admirers who delighted to call him the "Goldsmith of Texas."