ABRAHAM AND EPHRAIM by Sam Walter Foss

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1896

ABRAHAM AND EPHRAIM.

By Sam Walter Foss

[Some parents may learn a lesson from the following verses. The lesson is there.]

He sermonized industriously in his didactic way, And moralized momentously with Ephraim every day, And taught by tale and proverb and by every good device The virtuousness of virtue and the viciousness of vice.

His hortatory homilies intended to impress The rightfulness of righteousness, the sin of sinfulness, Were hurled at Ephraim throughout the whole year long, That he might rightly comprehend the wrongfulness of wrong.

“A youth can grow up virtuous, if we but pay the price, If we but saturate his soul with showers of advice; If we instill,” said Abraham, “perpetual truth in him”— And so in truth perpetually he soaked young Ephraim.

The youth absorbed a sermon, every morning ere he ate, On the awful reprobation of the awful reprobate, And he swallowed moral theses that were meant to edify, And he masticated maxims with his gingerbread and pie.

And ’twixt breakfast time and dinner the iniquity of sin Was taught to him industriously and patiently rubbed in, The turpfulness of turpitude was duly analyzed, And the evil of depravity was loudly advertised.

And then right after dinner the enormity of crime And the wrong of immorality was preached till supper time; Then Abraham would sermonize through all the evening hours, And drench young Ephraim’s consciousness in moralistic showers.

Thus through cumulative precept did old Abraham desire Accumulative virtue should young Ephraim acquire; He taught him virtue endlessly, and waited long to see How superlatively virtuous young Ephraim would be.

Thus maxim-goaded Ephraim found righteousness a bore, For salve is but an irritant when jammed into a sore; Even bread is innutritious if you resolutely cram An indiscriminate bakery down the bursting diaphragm.

Thus by hortatory homilies did Abraham impress The wrongfulness of righteousness, the good of sinfulness, And taught by tale and proverb and by every good device The viciousness of virtue and the virtuousness of vice.

Hence, Ephraim lived a reckless life and died a felon’s death, But gave this vindication with his latest dying breath: “I have been sermonized to death; I die, to speak precise, An unprotected victim of perpetual advice.”

—Sam Walter Foss.