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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Ballad Of Touch-The-Button Nell</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Beyond the Rocking Bridge it lies, the burg of evil fame,<br>The huts where hive and swarm and thrive the sisterhood of shame.<br>Through all the night each cabin light goes out and then goes in,<br>A blood-red heliograph of lust, a semaphore of sin.<br>From Dawson Town, soft skulking down, each lewdster seeks his mate;<br>And glad and bad, kimono clad, the wanton women wait.<br>The Klondike gossips to the moon, and sinners o'er its bars;<br>Each silent hill is dark and chill, and chill the patient stars.<br>Yet hark! upon the Rocking Bridge a bacchanalian step;<br>A whispered: "Come," the skirl of some hell-raking demirep...</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> * * * * * * * * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They gave a dance in Lousetown, and the Tenderloin was there,<br>The girls were fresh and frolicsome, and nearly all were fair.<br>They flaunted on their back the spoil of half-a-dozen towns;<br>And some they blazed in gems of price, and some wore Paris gowns.<br>The voting was divided as to who might be the belle;<br>But all opined, the winsomest was Touch-the-Button Nell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Among the merry mob of men was one who did not dance,<br>But watched the "light fantastic" with a sour sullen glance.<br>They saw his white teeth gleam, they saw his thick lips twitch;<br>They knew him for the giant Slav, one Riley Dooleyvitch.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Oh Riley Dooleyvitch, come forth," quoth Touch-the-Button Nell,<br>"And dance a step or two with me - the music's simply swell,"<br>He crushed her in his mighty arms, a meek, beguiling witch,<br>"With you, oh Nell, I'd dance to hell," said Riley Dooleyvitch.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He waltzed her up, he waltzed her down, he waltzed her round the hall;<br>His heart was putty in her hands, his very soul was thrall.<br>As Antony of old succumbed to Cleopatra's spell,<br>So Riley Dooleyvitch bowed down to Touch-the-Button Nell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And do you love me true?" she cried. "I love you as my life."<br>"How can you prove your love?" she sighed. "I beg you be my wife.<br>I stake big pay up Hunker way; some day I be so rich;<br>I make you shine in satins fine," said Riley Dooleyvitch.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Some day you'll be so rich," she mocked; "that old pipe-dream don't go.<br>Who gets an option on this kid must have some coin to show.<br>You work your ground. When Spring comes round, our wedding bells will ring.<br>I'm on the square, and I'll take care of all the gold you bring."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So Riley Dooleyvitch went back and worked upon his claim;<br>He ditched and drifted, sunk and stoped, with one unswerving aim;<br>And when his poke of raw moose-hide with dust began to swell,<br>He bought and laid it at the feet of Touch-the-Button Nell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> * * * * * * * * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now like all others of her ilk, the lady had a friend,<br>And what she made my way of trade, she gave to him to spend;<br>To stake him in a poker game, or pay his bar-room score;<br>He was a pimp from Paris. and his name was Lew Lamore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And so as Dooleyvitch went forth and worked as he was bid,<br>And wrested from the frozen muck the yellow stuff it hid,<br>And brought it to his Lady Nell, she gave him love galore -<br>But handed over all her gains to festive Lew Lamore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> * * * * * * * * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A year had gone, a weary year of strain and bloody sweat;<br>Of pain and hurt in dark and dirt, of fear that she forget.<br>He sought once more her cabin door: "I've laboured like a beast;<br>But now, dear one, the time has come to go before the priest.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I've brought you gold - a hundred fold I'll bring you bye and bye;<br>But oh I want you, want you bad; I want you till I die.<br>Come, quit this life with evil rife - we'll joy while yet we can..."<br>"I may not wed with you," she said; "I love another man.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I love him and I hate him so. He holds me in a spell.<br>He beats me - see my bruisèd brest; he makes my life a hell.<br>He bleeds me, as by sin and shame I earn my daily bread:<br>Oh cruel Fate, I cannot mate till Lew Lamore is dead!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> * * * * * * * * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The long lean flume streaked down the hill, five hundred feet of fall;<br>The waters in the dam above chafed at their prison wall;<br>They surged and swept, they churned and leapt, with savage glee and strife;<br>With spray and spume the dizzy flume thrilled like a thing of life.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"We must be free," the waters cried, and scurried down the slope;<br>"No power can hold us back," they roared, and hurried in their hope.<br>Into a mighty pipe they plunged, like maddened steers they ran,<br>And crashed out through a shard of steel - to serve the will of Man.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And there, by hydraulicking his ground beside a bedrock ditch,<br>With eye aflame and savage aim was Riley Dooleyvitch.<br>In long hip-boots and overalls, and dingy denim shirt,<br>Behind a giant monitor he pounded at the dirt.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A steely shaft of water shot, and smote the face of clay;<br>It burrowed in the frozen muck, and scooped the dirt away;<br>It gored the gravel from its bed, it bellowed like a bull;<br>It hurled the heavy rock aloft like heaps of fleecy wool.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Strength of a hundred men was there, resistess might and skill,<br>And only Riley Dooleyvitch to swing it at his will.<br>He played it up, he played it down, nigh deafened by its roar,<br>'Til suddenly he raised his eyes, and there stood Lew Lamore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Pig-eyed and heavy jowled he stood and puffed a big cigar;<br>As cool as though he ruled the roost in some Montmartre bar.<br>He seemed to say, "I've got a cinch, a double diamond hitch:<br>I'll skin this Muscovitish oaf, this Riley Dooleyvitch.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He shouted: "Stop ze water gun; it stun me... Sacré damn!<br>I like to make one beezness deal; you know ze man I am.<br>Zat leetle girl, she loves me so - I tell you what I do:<br>You geeve to me zees claim... Jeecrize! I geeve zat girl to you."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I'll see you damned," says Dooleyvitch; but e'er he checked his tongue,<br>(It may have been an accident) the little Giant swung;<br>Swift as a lightning flash it swung, until it plumply bore<br>And met with an obstruction in the shape of Lew lamore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It caught him up, and spun him round, and tossed him like a ball;<br>It played and pawed him in the air, before it let him fall.<br>Then just to show what it could do, with savage rend and thud,<br>It ripped the entrails from his spine, and dropped him in the mud.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=508705" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They gathered up the broken bones, and sadly in a sack,<br>They bore to town the last remains of Lew Lamore, the macque.<br>And would you hear the full details of how it all befell,<br>Ask Missis Riley Dooleyvitch (late Touch-the-Button Nell).</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Robert+William+Service">Robert William Service</a></strong></div>