1873: “One Hundred Degrees in the Shade”, by A. M. Thomson, published in Poems of a Day (90).
The local newspaper editor A. M. Thomson describes his professional relationships, such as the Milwaukee Sentinel editor A. C. Wheeler, who released The Chronicles of Milwaukee in 1861. Thomson also critiques Marcus “Brick” Pomeroy, who edited the La Crosse Democrat.
1873 “One Hundred Degrees in the Shade” Poems of a Day (90) A. M. Thomson
Gracious! This weather is confounded hot!
Which can be proven by my good friend Wheeler,
Who does the local sometimes—sometimes not;
He wrote the “Chronicles,” a sort of feeler
For Western fame; and has it, too, if one may guess
By what is said of it by all the local Press.
Wheeler, come out and bring a fount of soda—
But one thing I will whisper here, sub rosa—
Leave Angeline at home, and also Rhoda,
Tell them when men are gone things are so cozy.
Then a-fishing we will go, wheresoe’er you like,
You may keep the suckers, and I will take the pike(?).
But I should like to see the chap whose grit
Is fierce enough, in this infernal weather,
At that old desk to undertake to sit,
Chained down, as old Brooks used to tie his wether;
Prometheus like, you are bound to dullest prose,
While globes of perspiration trickle off your nose.
There’s white-haired Rublee, of the State Journal,
Who writes like rolling off a greasy log,
And reading it, one swears by the Eternal—
As Jackson did, who was a wicked dog,
How passing strange it is those clever fellows
Should write such good stuff, unless they’re blown by
bellows!
And I ’ll be dogged if Pomeroy, who was witty,
And wrote sharp things before this dreadful weather,
Hasn’t given out and melted! What a pity!
No more he ’ll come to time with “Brick Dust” or a
ditty,
But all his heavy work is like a feather!
Take my advice, dear Brick, and soak your massive
head
Beside some raft in rolling Mississippi’s bed.
I pity people who have got the itch,
And cannot scratch because they are so lazy;
If one was but a fool, like Tommy Fitch,
Or, better still, like Billy Johnson, crazy,
Why, then he would not know the weather is so hot,
Nor that the atmosphere is boiling like a pot!
Gracious! I cannot write! I ’m all a-lather;
Besides, old Hunks is coming up the stairs—
I wish the dickens had him and his blather;
How true misfortunes always hunt in pairs.
I wish that I could live where Sir John Franklin died,
I ’d bathe these burning limbs in Arctic’s frozen tide.