The Home Circle by Kate Clark

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 17, 1881

The Home Circle.

By Kate Clark

THE BACKBITER.

THERE's some one living in this town (Maybe you know her name, And maybe should I write it down, Your own might prove the same), Who, when you say, "He's good," will cry, "Indeed! You think that's true, But"—very confidentially— "You wouldn't if you knew!"

One says, "What pretty girl goes by?" "Oh, horrors! you don't think So!—Since we're you and I, I'll say, her parents drink. And so—well, I won't tell it out, Though I've no doubt 'tis true. You think she's nice and pretty, but You wouldn't if you knew!"

If one sings sweetly, "How she flats!" If dressed in taste, "What style!" Supremely "vulgar" all her hats, Her dresses simply "vile." And when good Deacon Busby failed (A noble man and true), She said, when we his lot bewailed, "You wouldn't if you knew!"

Let those admire and love who can This malice-breathing dame, Who seems to think a prosperous man Must surely be to blame; That beauty is a mark of sin; That goodness must be crime: She sees but thieves and rascals in The heroes of the time.

Sometimes she doesn't hesitate To tell us what she knows, And in nine cases out of eight A lie is all she shows, For virtue's sake, I hope to find One good old doctrine true; Some heat for such I should not mind, You wouldn't if you knew.

—Kate Clark, in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican.