This group consists of humorous songs. Certain ones resemble modern songs of the vaudeville, and such they probably were.

GRANDMOTHER’S MUSTARD PLASTER, 4aabb, 7ca: The story of a plaster that drew the buttons from a vest, axles from a wagon, a street car forty miles, jerked a “Chinee’s” boot off and pulled his leg at the “opium jint,” mashed a “cop’s” hat down, drew a wagon over town, stuck on a passenger train, drew it to Washington, where it remained stuck on politics.

BOY AND BUMBLE-BEE, 4a3b4c3b(?), 5: An urchin puts a bumble-bee in his pistol pocket and goes fishing. He sits down, the bee turns the trick, and “spoils the urchin’s disposition.”

KATE AND THE CLOTHIER, 4aabb, 8ca: A jilted maiden disguises herself in “an old cowhide with crooked horns,” and seizes her clothier-lover in a “lonesome field.” Thinking her to be the Devil, he renounces the lawyer’s daughter and pledges his troth to Kate.

SEYMORE WILSON, 3a3b4c3b, 8ca: He is a gawky, love-sick youth. He goes a-courting on Potriffle, but finding a rival sitting on the “calico-side” returns to his plowing, weeps, then becomes cheerful in his resolve to wait for another girl.

BILLY BOY, ii, 4a3b4c3b, 7: He replies to a series of questions about his wife: she is “too young to leave her mammy,” can “bake a cherry-pie,” is “as tall as a pine and as straight as a pumpkin-vine,” is “twice six times seven, twice twenty and eleven,” and so on.

[THE PREACHER AND THE BEAR], a chant of the 4a3b4c3b type, 7ca: He goes hunting a-Sunday, meets a grizzly bear, climbs a tree, and prays a humorous prayer for help. The limb breaks; he falls, but escapes.

[LOVE IS SUCH A FUNNY THING], 4a3b4c3b4d3e4f3e and 4a3b4c3b, 9: It causes empty pockets, second-hand clothing, collectors, and even brings the “bald-headed end of the broom” into play: a husband’s soliloquy.

[THE MARRIED MAN], 4aa, 5: A married man’s woes: children on his knees, bad clothing, “seeping” shoes while the single man suffers none of these things.

DEVILISH MARY, 4a3b4c3b, 5: A hen-pecked husband’s lament: he woos and marries the termagant within three days then follows trouble. She “mashes his mouth with a shovel,” bundles up her “duds”, and leaves him within three weeks.

I WON’T MARRY AT ALL, 4aab3b and 4aab3b, 3: I won’t marry a rich man because he will drink and fall in the ditch; a poor man, for he will go begging; a fat man, for he will do nothing but “nurse” the cat.

POOR OLD MAID, metre as below, 5: She laments her virginity:

Dressed in yaller, pink, and blue
Poor old maid!
Dressed in yaller, pink, and blue,
I’m just as sweet as the morning dew,
And to a husband I’d stick like glue
Poor old maid!

I WISH I WAS SINGLE AGAIN, metre as below, 5: A married man’s repentance: his first wife died

I married me another, O then, O then;
I married me another O then;
I married me another, the Devil’s grandmother,
And I wish I was single again.

JOE BOWERS, 3abcb, 10: He leaves his sweetheart, Sally Black, in Pike County, Missouri, and goes to “Rome,” California, to make a home for her. Later, he receives a letter from his brother Ike saying that she had married a red-headed butcher and that their baby had red hair.

A POUND OF TOW, 3abcded, 4: A husband warns all bachelors by the example of his own wife, who, though a good spinner before her marriage, has since become a gad-about and a gossip.