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"
  • 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