"Apples Finkey!" Many a name
Has a grander sound in the roll of fame;
Many a more resplendent deed
Has burst to light in the hour of need;
But never a one from a truer heart,
Striving to know and to do its part.
Striving, under his skin of tan,
With the years of a lad to act like a man.
And who was "Apples?" I hear you ask.
To trace his descent were indeed a task.
Winding and vague was the family road--
And, perhaps, like Topsy, "he only growed."
But into the camp he lolled one noon,
Barefoot, and whistling a darky tune,
Into the camp of his dusky peers--
The gallant negro cavaliers--
The Tenth, preparing, at break o' day,
To move to the transport down in the bay.
Boom! roared the gun--the ship swung free,
With her good prow turned to the Carib Sea.
"Pity it was, for the little cuss,
We couldn't take 'Apples' along with us,"
The trooper said, as he walked the deck,
And Tampa became a vanishing speck.
What's that? A stir and a creak down there
In the piled-up freight--then a tuft of hair,
Crinkled and woolly and unshorn--
And out popped "Apples" "ez shore's yer born!"
Of course he wasn't provided for
In the colonel's roll or the rules of war;
But somehow or other the troop was glad
To welcome the little darky lad.
You know how our brave men, white and black,
Landed and followed the Spaniard's track;
And the Tenth was there in the very front,
Seeking and finding the battle's brunt.
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