Miss True’s Quilt.

In seventeen hundred seventy-two,

Did the good matron, Prudence True,

A saintly soul, devoid of guilt,

Begin her famous crazy quilt,

And told her helpmeet, Goodman True,

She’d finish in a month or two;

And Goodman True, as good men do.

Believed  his good wife, Prudence True.

And when he found his supper late,

Brave Goodman True in silence sate,

And waited till his good wife built

Another square of crazy quilt.

He did not rave or loudly speak—

Much married life had made him meek—

For he had learned from his sweet bride

A husband’s part is to subside.

To sit serene, composed and dumb,

And in domestic peace succumb.

He on the martyr plan was built,

And lived a martyr to that quilt.
 

Good Prudence True, as good dames do,

Each day her loved task would pursue,

Each evening her brave husband tried

To look content and edified,

And those slow, patient hours beguile

With his sad, long-enduring smile;

Long years did that poor, sad soul wilt,

Then die at last—of crazy quilt.
Long years passed on and Widow Prue
Toiled on, as all good widows do,

And in her calm seclusion curled,

Heard not the voices of the world,

The echoes of the Concord fight,

The battle fought on Bunker’s height,

The cannonade from Yorktown blown,

That sacred King George upon his throne,

She heeded as a trivial thing,

For what are conqueror or king

To a good dame whose life is built

Into her darling crazy quilt?
 

She never thought if she preferred

George Washington to George the Third;
Her quilt was life's supremest thing,

Both under president and king;

While loyal to her quilt and true,

She thought that either George would do,

Gray, full of years, the good soul died,

And passed on to the glorified.

And left this scene of woe and guilt

And her unfinished crazy quilt.

And then her youngest daughter Ruth.

In all the hopefulness of youth,

That knows no obstacle or fears,

Took up the mighty task of years.

Her smile was sweet, her eyes were bright,

Her touch was fairy-like and light;

And lovers read within her eyes
The tales of happy destimes;

And many came and knelt and sued,

But on the quilt her eyes were glued. 

She saw them not as there they knelt,

Love’s hurtling dart she never felt,

But gave them all to understand

She had a mission great and grand,

A noble and exalted aim

Beyond prosperous Cupid’s claim;

A great ambition, grand and high,

To finish up that quilt and die.

And brave Ruth kept her purpose good

Through four-score years of maidenhood.

And so she lived and died a maid.

And when she in the grave was laid

Her sister’s youngest daughter Sue

Took her unfinished quilt to do.

Meantime, old empires passed away,

And senile monarchs weary grown

Slipped down from many a tottering throne;

Old realms were conquered by their foes,

Old kingdom’s fell, new nations rose;
And long endengered wars that rent

The bases of a continent
 

Swept on their path of fire and death

And shriveled with their fatal breath

The slow-built fabric of the years,

And left a track of blood and tears.

But while the whirling world did range

Adown “the ringing grooves of changes.”

While Time’s resistless current flowed

Young Sue she sewed and sewed and sewed

And sewed and sewed and slowly built

The squares upon that crazy quilt.

And now she’s old and bent and gray.

Her youthful friends have passed away.

Her loving husband’s tomb is built

But still she works upon her quilt,

And now deserted and forlorn,

To generations yet unborn,

When she has left this world of guilt

She’ll pass along her crazy quilt.

In six short days the world was done,

The world the planets and the sun;

But in a hundred years are built

A fraction of a crazy quilt.
Sam Wolter Foss
St. Paul daily globe., February 04, 1894, Page 14, Image 14