Accident Poem by Della Hodgson James

I was in a run-a-way accident once
It did something awful to me,
And when an animal begins to rear
I want to run and flee.
You can just laugh all you want to
It won't hurt me one bit,
But let a horse or car act strange
If you want to see me git.

We had been to Grandpa's after fruit
To his old home in Taccoa,
There was ten of us in Grandpa's hack
Driven by Dean, his foster boy.

Old Molly, and Nell were Grandpa's mares
A bay, and a dapple gray,
As pretty as any picture, then
So fine, slick and sway.

In a mile of home the hack tongue dropped
Then pannel's of fence flew,
We were all scattered upon the ground
The hack was left all askew.

Everything was chaos then
Mother held her baby child,
All of us children were crying
But dear Grandpa only smiled.

None was so serious hurt as Grandpa
Upon the ground he lay,
Dean lifted him up tenderly
But he knew nothing more that day.

Those mares were running smoothly
Or it seemed so at the start,
But Nell fell, and was dragged away
Until the harness was torn apart.

They found them some time later
Molly, at Grandpa's on the hill,
Nell was at Fathers house
Down at the Sycamore mill.

You can laugh, and laugh, if you care to
I guess I can laugh some, too,
But I don't stay, with queer acting things
I leave them, you bet I do.