An Old- Fashion Girl.

An Old- Fashion Girl.
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Just an old-fashioned girl, of the kind that you know
When your mothersat up to mend stockings for you
With a ball of red yarn and a bag full of hose
And a goose-eggish thing that slipped down in the toos.
Just an old-fashioned girl, of the kind that brings tears
To your eyes when you think of the toil of her years,
And you wonder how ever she laid every curl
On a half-dozen heads-such an old-fashioned girl.

Just an old-fashioned girl, of the age ere the flat,
Or of winters in this place and summers in that.
Of the kind that you knew when you went with bare
legs In the days when you ransacked the manger for
Just an old-fashioned girl in a blue gingham gown
That is leading your fancy some forty years down
On the pathway of years, till the hum and the whirl
Of the day you forget with that old-fashioned girl.

Just an old-fashioned girl of that out-of-date day,
When you knew all the hymns and she found time to play
On the organ in church, and you knelt with her there
And repeated-what was it? -ah, yes! -’twas a prayer:
Such an old-fashioned thing, as you think of it now
With the years writ in wrinkles on temple and brow;
But the years back there gleam with the lustre of pearl-
When you walked hand-in-hand with that old- fashioned girl.

Just an old-fashioned girl of those old-fashioned days,
And she knelt in the night with a prayer that she’d raise
Up a son to be manly and honest and true.
There’s a mound where the wild-flowers nodded and grew
Ere the World bade you come, and a love that lies there
With its heart in the dust, but its essence as rare
As the breath of the rose and as pure as the pearl
That shall tinge all your dreams of that old- fashioned girl.
-J. W. Foley.