Run for your wife's sake!
Don't wait for me."

And that was all
Heard in the din -
Heard of Tom Flynn -
Flynn of Virginia.


Or the engineer, again, on the Mississippi, who, when the steamer
caught fire, held, as he had sworn he would, her bow against the
bank, till every soul save he got safe on shore:


Through the hot black breath of the burning boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard;
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knew he would keep his word.
And sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell;
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.

He weren't no saint--but at the judgment
I'd run my chance with Jim
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shake hands with him.
He'd seen his duty--a dead sure thing -
And went for it there and then;
And Christ is not going to be too hard