Farm festivals :: :: University of Virginia Library

There's little you'll be wanting, cheap or dear,
That has not something somewhat like it, here;
Whatever honest people drink or eat,
Or pack their bodies in, from head to feet,
Want what you may, you'll get it—search no more—
Or imitation of it—in this store.
The body's needs not only here you find,
But food, too, for the sympathies and mind;
For in one corner, fed by many lands,
The small post-office dignifiedly stands,
With square, red-numbered boxes in its arms,
Well stocked with white and brown enveloped charms.
Here the little girl, irresolutely gay,
Asks if there's “any thing for us to-day”;

Here the farm lad, who wider fields would seek,
Comes for the county paper once a week.
Through this delivery port-hole there is hurled
Printed bombardment from the outside world;
The great, far world, whose heart-throbs, up and down,
Strike pulses, e'en within this quiet town.