Little Willie

As my mother passes her final days in her bed, we are cheered by remembering some of the funny things she used to do and say.

This rhyme (we think she learned it from her father) always brought a smile to her face:

Little Willie had a mirror;

he licked the back all off.

Thinking, in his childish fancy, 

it would cure the whooping-cough. 

On the morning of the funeral, 

the neighbor said to Mrs. Brown, 

“Twas a chilly day for Little Willie 

when the mercury went down.”