Hank Snow - The Ballad Of Hard Luck Henry 1968 lyrics

Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank That's staked out nigh three hundred claims and every one a blank That's followed every fool stampede and seen the rise and fall Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes and not a speck in sight Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man to booze But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof he knew the way to lose Twas in the fall of nineteen four leap-year I've heard them say When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile past Late in the year he struck it rich the real pay-streak at last The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with speckled earth And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life A woman with soft soothing ways a confidant a wife And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's rich treasure-trove When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg You know these Yukon eggs of ours some pink some green some blue A dollar per a**orted tints a**orted flavors too The supercilious cheechako might designate them high But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by and by Well Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight At last he made it out and then the legend ran like this Will Klondike miner write to Peg Plumhollow Squashville Wis That night he got to thinking of this far-off unknown fair It seemed so sort of opportune an answer to his prayer She flitted sweetly through his dreams she haunted him by day She smiled through clouds of nicotine she cheered his weary way At last he yielded to the spell his course of love he set Wisconsin his objective point his object Margaret With every mile of sea and land his longing grew and grew He practised all his pretty words and these I fear were few At last one frosty evening with a cold chill down his spine He found himself before her house the threshold of the shrine His courage flickered to a spark then glowed with sudden flame He knocked he heard a welcome word she came his goddess came Oh she was fair as any flower and huskily he spoke I'm all the way from Klondike with a mighty heavy poke I'm looking for a la**ie one whose Christian name is Peg Who sought a Klondike miner and who wrote it on an egg The la**ie gazed at him a space her cheeks grew rosy red She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes then tenderly she said Yes lonely Klondike miner it is true my name is Peg It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an egg My heart went out to someone in that land of night and cold But oh I fear that Yukon egg must have been mighty old I waited long I hoped and feared you should have come before I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months or more I'm sorry since you've come so far you ain't the one that wins But won't you take a step inside I'll let you see the twins