Benjamin Franklin King Jr.

Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. (March 17, 1857 – 1894) was an American humorist and poet whose work published under the names Ben King or the pseudonym Bow Hackley achieved notability in his lifetime and afterwards.

Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. by Chas A. Gray

Quotes

•     If I should die to-night
  And you should come in deepest grief and woe—
  And say:—"Here's that ten dollars that I owe,"
      I might arise in my large white cravat
      And say, "What's that?"
  • "If I should die"
  • Parody on: "If I should die to-night, / My friends would look upon my quiet face / Before they laid it in its resting-place, / And deem that death had left it almost fair", Belle E. Smith

• Nothing to do but work,
      Nothing to eat but food,
  Nothing to wear but clothes
      To keep one from going nude.
  • "The Pessimist"
  • Published as "The Sum of Life" in The Western Medical Reporter (February 1893), p. 48 [1] [2]

• Nothing to breathe but air
      Quick as a flash 'tis gone;
  Nowhere to fall but off,
      Nowhere to stand but on.
  • "The Pessimist"

• Nowhere to go but out,
  Nowhere to come but back.
  • "The Pessimist"

External links

• Ben King's verse, 1894, from the Internet Archive
• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), p. 838