Were you a little Dutch girl
You’d be, perhaps, as sweet
As now you are, my darling,
And very much more neat!
You’d be a little housewife,
And even at your play
You’d take your knitting needles,
And knit and knit away!
You’d never be forgetting
To feed your pussy-cat,
And she, like Holland pussies,
Would grow so sleek and fat.
But were you, dear, a Gretchen,
You’d live across the sea,
And so would be, my dearie,
No kind of use to me.
—Edith Colby Banfield.