Benjamin Franklin King Jr.

Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. by Chas A. Gray

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.

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, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "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, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Nothing to breathe but air
      Quick as a flash 'tis gone;
  Nowhere to fall but off,
      Nowhere to stand but on.
  • "The Pessimist," first published as "The Sum of Life" in the Chicago Mail, c. January 1893.

External links

• Ben King's verse, 1894, from the Internet Archive