Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
For I am going home,
To keep me warm and dry,
No more on the seas to roam.
Roast beef and turkey free,
And likewise chicken-pie,
Salt junk—farewell to thee!
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
I’m going to the land
Where ham and eggs they fry;
Veal cutlets are on hand;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
Roast duck doth there abound,
And mince and apple-pie
In stacks is lyin’ round;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
I smell the rich roast goose,
A second slice I’ll try;
A third I shan’t refuse;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
Planked shad is very fine;
I’m in for living high,
On terrapins with wine;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
I seek my native soil,
For soft-shell crabs I sigh,
And oysters on the broil;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
Unto the canvas-back
Myself I will apply,
And hickory nuts I’ll crack;
Of chinquapins no lack;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
The buckwheat-cake shall boom,
The Jersey sausage fry;
Amid green corn I’ll bloom,
And hominy consume;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
I see the cranberry sauce,
All with my mental eye;
Plum-pudding I will boss;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
Venison on chafing-dish,
With jelly, by the bye,
Coffee and fresh cat-fish;
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
I’ll soon be on the strand
Where luscious reed birds fly;
My own—my Maryland—
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
Old Ocean with thy foam,
For thee no more I sigh;
For I am going home!
Hard tack and cheese, good-bye!
“That bill o’ fare,” cried Abner Chapin, loud,
“Is pitched too high for this here Northern crowd:
New England rum, I spose, seems rather meek
’Longside peach-brandy down in Chesapeake.
I don’t de-cry your vittles, by no means,
But I prefer a pot of pork and beans
To all the canvas-backs that ever flew,
With soft-shell crabs and reed birds thereunto.
And all burnt offerins of fries of lambs
Ain’t worth a dish of good Rhode Island clams;
And all your Spanish mackerel, my man,
Worth one good mackerel caught off Cape Ann!”
“Talkin’ of mackerel”—Here Peter Young
Broke off this sermon with the “Mackerel Song.”