DEDICATED TO
MY MOST AGREEABLE ASSISTANT,
 MY MOST COMPETENT CRITIC,
        MY WIFE.
  Bliss' Character Songs
"Life's Indian Summer" (12 Aug 1873)
For a Mezzo Soprano or Contralto Voice
CHARACTERS
An old Couple sitting by the fireside, cap, spectacles, &c.
Ballad.
Words by Paulina Dupre
Music by Philip Paul Bliss, 1838-1876

Chicago: George F. Root & Sons, no plate number.
[Source: 09147@LoC]

1. 
There’s no one to stand by me baking day, 
Watching for bits of dough; 
There’s no one to tease for a little pie, 
Or xake, or “turnover,” on the sly,­­
Do you note the change dear Joe? 

[REFRAIN] [Sung after each verse]
Dreamily on the years do go, 
We are all a lone, dear Joe, 
All alone! All alone!

2. 
It was not so lonely in early days, 
Joseph, for you and me; 
We sat in the light of the hemlock bough, 
And plann’d for the future­­ the past, ’tis now 
Far away, how can it be?

3. 
There’s never the patter of little feet, 
Never a song of glee, 
There’s no one to push up a chair beside, 
And prattle away of a pony ride, 
Oh the house is too still for me.

4. 
Our children have scatter’d­­ have pass’d away, 
Leaving an empty nest, 
One darling we burried beneath the sod­­ 
Our on ly one that has gone to God, 
And the world has claim’d the rest.

5. 
And so I was sad, as I baked today, 
Dreaming of now, and then, 
I thou’t of the fingers that stole the dough­
The dear  little fingers that bother’d me so, 
And I wish’d them back again.