Little Mack

This talk about the journalists that run the East is bosh,     We've got a Western editor that's little, but, O gosh!     He lives here in Mizzoora where the people are so set     In ante-bellum notions that they vote for Jackson yet;     But the paper he is running makes the rusty fossils swear,--     The smartest, likeliest paper that is printed anywhere!     And, best of all, the paragraphs are pointed as a tack,     And that's because they emanate     From little Mack.     In architecture he is what you'd call a chunky man,     As if he'd been constructed on the summer cottage plan;     He has a nose like Bonaparte; and round his mobile mouth     Lies all the sensuous languor of the children of the South;     His dealings with reporters who affect a weekly bust     Have given to his violet eyes a shadow of distrust;     In glorious abandon his brown hair wanders back     From the grand Websterian forehead     Of little Mack.     No matter what the item is, if there's an item in it,     You bet your life he's on to it and nips it in a minute!     From multifarious nations, countries, monarchies, and lands,     From Afric's sunny fountains and India's coral strands,     From Greenland's icy mountains and Siloam's shady rills,     He gathers in his telegrams, and Houser pays the bills;     What though there be a dearth of news, he has a happy knack     Of scraping up a lot of scoops,     Does little Mack.     And learning? Well he knows the folks of every tribe and age     That ever played a part upon this fleeting human stage;     His intellectual system's so extensive and so greedy     That, when it comes to records, he's a walkin' cyclopedy;     For having studied (and digested) all the books a-goin',     It stands to reason he must know about all's worth a-knowin'!     So when a politician with a record's on the track,     We're apt to hear some history     From little Mack.     And when a fellow-journalist is broke and needs a twenty,     Who's allus ready to whack up a portion of his plenty?     Who's allus got a wallet that's as full of sordid gain     As his heart is full of kindness and his head is full of brain?     Whose bowels of compassion will in-va-ri-a-bly move     Their owner to those courtesies which plainly, surely prove     That he's the kind of person that never does go back     On a fellow that's in trouble?     Why, little Mack!     I've heard 'em tell of Dana, and of Bonner, and of Reid,     Of Johnnie Cockerill, who, I'll own, is very smart indeed;     Yet I don't care what their renown or influence may be,     One metropolitan exchange is quite enough for me!     So keep your Danas, Bonners, Reids, your Cockerills, and the rest,     The woods is full of better men all through this woolly West;     For all that sleek, pretentious, Eastern editorial pack     We wouldn't swap the shadow of     Our little Mack!