This is excerpts from the book "Flapdoodle" by Alvin Schwartz.
A hungry boy gave a penny for a custard pie. He throwed that pie through a brick wall nine feet thick. Then he jumped over the wall and broke his ankle just above the elbow. When his cat started singing "Yankee Doodle," the boy jumped into a dry creek and drowned. Meanwhile, the cat grabbed off nine turkey gobblers that were passing through town. Then he climbed into a tree with them and lived happily ever after. Forty years later to the very day the boy saddled up an old hog and drove past that house where nobody lives. And everybody stood at the window and waved "Hello!"
The flowers were gaily singing,
The birds were full in bloom,
When I went up to the cellar
To look for the attic room.
I saw five thousand miles away
A house just out of sight.
It stood between a lilac bush;
Its walls were whitewashed white.
'Twas midnight and the setting sun
Was rising slowly in the West,
And the little fishes in the air
Sat huddled in their nest.
'Twas midnight on the ocean.
Not a streetcar was in sight.
I stepped into a drugstore
To get myself a light.
The man behind the counter
Was a woman old and gray
Who used to peddle doughnuts
On the road to Mandalay.
Her children were all orphans,
Except one tiny tot
Who lived across the street
In a house on a vacant lot.
She looked at me, and, smiling,
Here eyes were full of tears,
She put her head beneath her foot
And stood that way for years.
I went down a long, broad, short, narrow road, and there I met a pigsty tied to an elder bush. I knocked at the maid and the door came out. She asked if I could eat a glass of buttermilk and drink a crust of bread and cheese. I said, "No, thank you. Don't mind if I do." Then I went a bit further and I met a bark and he dogged at me.
One a big molicepan
Saw a bittle lum
Sitting on the sturbcone
Chewing gubblebum.
"Lum," said the molicepan,
"Better simme gome."
"Tot on your nintype,"*
Said the bittle lum.
*-Old fashioned way of saying, "No."
I like meat better than any other vegetable except ice cream.
I feel more like I do now than I did when I came in.
I am going now. If I should return while I am away, please wait until I get back.
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