Classic Poem

I

Ten good one-dollar bills one day
Within a good man's wallet lay.

And he resolved (so good was he)
To trace each dollar's pedigree;

And not to spend a single bill
That bore a stain of wrong or ill.

So like a sleuth he followed back
Each dollar bill upon its track.

II

Bill Number One he found was made
In a dishonest jockey trade;

And Two a grocer made of late
By overcharge and underweight;

And Three was made through watered milk,
And Four by selling damaged silk;

And Number Five a sweater made
Through starving women underpaid;

And Six was made in dens of shame,
And Seven in a gambling game;

And Number Eight he found to be
The price of wretched perjury;

And Nine was from a robber's clan,
Ten stolen from a murdered man.

III

Our good man would not spend again
This money dark with many a stain,

And so he yielded up his breath,
And with his money starved to death.

Ten good one-dollar bills that day
Within that dead man's wallet lay.

They'd never found a man, ah me!
Who'd used them half as ill as he.