A little background before we get to the poem itself:
James was born October 7, 1849 in Greenfield Indiana and died in Indianapolis July 22, 1916! He was also known as the Hoosier (People in Indiana are called Hoosiers) poet! This is of note and interesting to me as I live in Indiana! It was originally published in 1885 under the name "Elf Child". It then become "Little Orphant Allie" in its second printing and due to a typesetting error, became the title it is known by today. It was based on a real person (Mary Alice "Allie" Smith) and is about being nice or you may suffer the same fate as the bad children! A very interesting note is yes it was the inspiration for the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, which was the inspiration for Annie! So we have this poem and an error in the third printing to thank for Annie!
So here is the poem as it was featured in the newspaper (not sure if this is the third printing or not but this is from an Indiana newspaper, but forget which and when sorry!
That is fun. And it reminds me of something. Some Halloween song, that has instrumental music playing and has a kid reciting a poem, and it sounds a lot like this. If I come across I will come back and let you know.
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