Mutton. In the middle of the summer, when the town is limp with heat, And the asphalt of the footpath curls your boots and burns your feet: When you’re creased and crabbed and sodden, and can hardly raise a crawl, And the perspiration’s drippin’ in a constant waterfall; There’s a penetratin’ odor gets abroad and fairly roars; It will creep in through the keyholes and it sneaks beneath the doors; And it fills your happy home up from the cellar to the roof, Until ev’ry other odor holds its breath and stands aloof. That’s Mutton! Mutton! Everlastin’ Mutton! All-pervadin’, never-fadin’ smell of cookin’ sheep. Into ev’ry room ’twill roam, chasin’ you from house and home, Mutton flaunted, mutton-haunted, even in your sleep. You can smell it in the parlor, you can feel it in the hall, You can HEAR it in the kitchen, where it hugs you like a pall. Hov’ring o’er your couch at midnight, wafting thro’ your troubled sleep: First to greet you in the mornin’ when the day begins to peep. Seek you vainly to evade it in an open-air retreat, It will rise and upper-cut you, from the gratin’s in the street. Vain are all your disinfectants, for they fail the woes to drown Of a mutton-ridden people in a mutton-scented town. Oh, the irony of hearin’ songs about the home, sweet home; When you swelter in an oven where the kitchen odors roam. When each kindly word is wafted on a mutton-scented breeze, And each sigh stirs up remembrance of a week of hashed-up teas: Where endearing terms are flavored with a touch of mutton raw, And you sample last week’s dinner, ev’ry tender breath you draw. Do you wonder that our home-life isn’t what it ought to be? Do you know what sets us drinkin’, in our abject misery? It’s Mutton! Mutton! Soul-destroyin’ Mutton! Over-cloudin’, odor-shroudin’ all in life that’s bright; By a thoughtless movement stirred, chokin’ down a kindly word, Ever-present, effervescent, mornin’, noon and night.