Armazindy / The Poems and Prose Sketches of James Whitcomb Riley

Chapter 80: THE TOY PENNY-DOG

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About This Book

A mixed collection of poems and prose sketches that depicts small‑town and rural life through vernacular narration, sentimental observation, and comic detail. Longer narrative pieces explore personal loss, domestic struggles, and neighborhood intrigues, while shorter lyrics and children’s verses celebrate play, memory, and everyday tenderness. The voice shifts between musical, folksy dialect and plain colloquial phrasing, producing a rhythmic, conversational tone. Recurrent concerns include household labor, family ties, youthful fancy, and the mingled humor and nostalgia of ordinary community experience.

THE TOY PENNY-DOG

Ma put my Penny-Dog

Safe on the shelf,

An’ left no one home but him,

Me an’ myself;

So I clumbed a big chair

I pushed to the wall—

But the Toy Penny-Dog

Ain’t there at all!

I went back to Dolly—

An’ she ’uz gone too,

An’ little Switch ’uz layin’ there;—

An’ Ma says “Boo!”—

An’ there she wuz a-peepin’

Through the front-room door:

An’ I ain’t goin’ to be a bad

Little girl no more!