defined
- Sheriff
- n. In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.
- John Elmer Pettibone Cajee (I write of him with little glee) Was just as bad as he could be.
- ’Twas frequently remarked: “I swon! The sun has never looked upon So bad a man as Neighbor John.”
- A sinner through and through, he had This added fault: it made him mad To know another man was bad.
- In such a case he thought it right To rise at any hour of night And quench that wicked person’s light.
- Despite the town’s entreaties, he Would hale him to the nearest tree And leave him swinging wide and free.
- Or sometimes, if the humor came, A luckless wight’s reluctant frame Was given to the cheerful flame.
- While it was turning nice and brown, All unconcerned John met the frown Of that austere and righteous town.
- “How sad,” his neighbors said, “that he So scornful of the law should be — An anar c, h, i, s, t.”
- (That is the way that they preferred To utter the abhorrent word, So strong the aversion that it stirred.)
- “Resolved,” they said, continuing, “That Badman John must cease this thing Of having his unlawful fling.
- “Now, by these sacred relics” — here Each man had out a souvenir Got at a lynching yesteryear —
- “By these we swear he shall forsake His ways, nor cause our hearts to ache By sins of rope and torch and stake.
- “We’ll tie his red right hand until He’ll have small freedom to fulfil The mandates of his lawless will.”
- So, in convention then and there, They named him Sheriff. The affair Was opened, it is said, with prayer.
- J. Milton Sloluck