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Ballad Of Hard Luck Henry
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Hank Snow
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Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
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That's staked out nigh three hundred claims and every one a blank
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That's followed every fool stampede and seen the rise and fall
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Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all
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That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song
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To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along
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That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes and not a speck in sight
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Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right
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Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man to booze
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But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof he knew the way to lose
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Twas in the fall of nineteen four leap-year I've heard them say
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When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay
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And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile past
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Late in the year he struck it rich the real pay-streak at last
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The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with speckled earth
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And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth
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And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired
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He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired
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One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate
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He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate
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A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life
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A woman with soft soothing ways a confidant a wife
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And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove
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He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's rich treasure-trove
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When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg
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For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg
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You know these Yukon eggs of ours some pink some green some blue
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A dollar per assorted tints assorted flavors too
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The supercilious cheechako might designate them high
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But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by and by
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Well Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light
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And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight
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At last he made it out and then the legend ran like this
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Will Klondike miner write to Peg Plumhollow Squashville Wis
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That night he got to thinking of this far-off unknown fair
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It seemed so sort of opportune an answer to his prayer
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She flitted sweetly through his dreams she haunted him by day
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She smiled through clouds of nicotine she cheered his weary way
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At last he yielded to the spell his course of love he set
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Wisconsin his objective point his object Margaret
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With every mile of sea and land his longing grew and grew
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He practised all his pretty words and these I fear were few
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At last one frosty evening with a cold chill down his spine
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He found himself before her house the threshold of the shrine
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His courage flickered to a spark then glowed with sudden flame
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He knocked he heard a welcome word she came his goddess came
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Oh she was fair as any flower and huskily he spoke
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I'm all the way from Klondike with a mighty heavy poke
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I'm looking for a lassie one whose Christian name is Peg
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Who sought a Klondike miner and who wrote it on an egg
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The lassie gazed at him a space her cheeks grew rosy red
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She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes then tenderly she said
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Yes lonely Klondike miner it is true my name is Peg
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It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an egg
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My heart went out to someone in that land of night and cold
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But oh I fear that Yukon egg must have been mighty old
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I waited long I hoped and feared you should have come before
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I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months or more
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I'm sorry since you've come so far you ain't the one that wins
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But won't you take a step inside I'll let you see the twins
Hank Snow - Nobody's Child
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