"A 'Tail Uv' Stamps"

I found this quite humorous ... and thought I'd share it. (From 1913 no less!):

A TAIL UV STAMPS.
After C. J. COLTON. (A Modification.)

Lately I've been thinking of how very sad and bad
That so very many people have the stamp collecting fad;
If one had choked this vice when it first began to start
It would have saved full many a sad and breaking heart.
It has entirely ruined my happiness, and turned my hair all white,
It worries me in the daytime and bothers me at night,
I mope around regretting all the happy bygone days
Before my wife became a victim of the stamp collecting craze.

I am an honest working feller, and I try to do what's right,
I don't drink any likker, and I don't go out at night,
All the money that I earn with these old hands of mine
I give my better half, for to her I am always kind.
I've been married many a happy year and never in my life
Have I said a word that's cross to my little wife.
But Old Nick has got his work in, in some mighty sneaking ways,
For he has made my wife a victim of the stamp collecting craze.

You see we went calling on some city folks one night,
And a little feller in the house who takes a great delight
In saving up old postage stamps, he up and tells my wife
That to make a collection is the greatest thing in life;
And he gave her some to start with, and she makes me buy a book,
To paste the doggoned things in, and since then, by hook or crook,
She has been gathering in the labels, and she don't care what she pays,
For she is mighty reckless, since she got the stamp collecting craze.

First thing I began to notice was the meals getting short,
We didn't have of things to eat the half of what we ort;
Then the babie's clothes got shabby and she didn't buy some more.
But made them wear the old ones, a thing she'd never done before,
And I found that of the money given her to wisely spend
For furren stamps a goodly portion she was always sure to send;
She would scrape, and she would pinch, and every cent that she could raise
Would go, like so much dirt, to feed the stamp collecting craze.

She has scarcely ate her meals before she is fooling with her book,
And she worries all the neighbors just to come and have a look;
Her old album is beneath her piller when she goes to bed at night
And she is counting out her treasures in the morn before it's light;
I've got to do the house work, wash the kids and fix the lamps,
'Cause my wife haint got the time, you know, to spare from her old stamps.
I tell you my heart is breaking, and sad are all my days
Since my wife's become a victim of the stamp collecting craze.

Meekel's Weekly Stamp News
November 15, 1913

It's the earliest description of "the disease" that I've ever seen.

As a lover of Philatelic verse, that is wonderful.

Thanks for finding it and posting it.

How can I write another ode to stamps after that !?

Londonbus1

It is a remarkable poem (not only humorous but true) ... considering it's nearly a century old.

When I read these old articles, I just think of all the stamps that never existed back then and the small albums that could fit an entire country's worth of stamps into a manageable size and the low value one would pay for some of the classics we hold as treasures today. Of course, in 1913, most everything was probably hinged (!!)

WT1
You are the journalist of SCF and this poem is fantastic.

I'm still searching for a wife with the stamp collecting craze

Great poem !

It is amazing what people here turn up.

Good morning everyone
Great poem, should send it to PhilB
David-DJD

DJD thanks....it certoinly strikes a noive here !!