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FALSE ALARMS, by                     Poet's Biography
Last Line: For giving mamma false alarms.
Subject(s): False Alarms; Girls


ONE day little Mary most loudly did call,
"Mamma! O mamma, pray come here;
A fall I have had, oh! a very sad fall."
Mamma ran in haste and in fear.

Then Mary jump'd up, and she laugh'd in great glee,
And cried, "Why, how fast you can run!
No harm has befall'n, I assure you, to me,
My screaming was only in fun."

Her mother was busy at work the next day;
She heard from without a loud cry:
"The great dog has got me! O help me! O pray!
He tears me, he bites me, I die!"

Mamma, all in terror, quick to the court flew,
And there little Mary she found;
Who, laughing, said, "Madam, pray how do you do?"
And curtsey'd quite down to the ground.

That night little Mary was some time in bed,
When cries and loud shrieking were heard:
"I'm on fire, O mamma! O come up, or I'm dead!"
Mamma, she believed not a word.

"Sleep, sleep, naughty child," she called out from below,
"How often have I been deceived!
You are telling a story, you very well know:
Go to sleep, for you can't be believed."

Yet still the child scream'd: now the house fill'd with smoke:
That fire is above, Jane declares:
Alas! Mary's words they soon found were no joke,
When ev'ry one hasten'd upstairs.

All burnt and all seam'd is her once pretty face,
And terribly marked are her arms;
Her features all scarred, leave a lasting disgrace,
For giving mamma false alarms.





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