My Grandfather in his once Spenserian hand 
Cribbed by the cold which scotched his ancient bones 
Wrote two-cents postcards out of Dixieland 
To twenty kin and near-kin, Smith and Jones 
And several mixed up of a foreign name, 
Saying Now I am Free, I Might arrange a trip... 
Ready to travel before the postman came:
Clothes in a parcel, medicines in a grip.
But those who answered said they had the flu,
Or were about to move, or Maybe Later;
And he, having nothing, nothing whatever to do, 
Got too old even for the elevator,
Much less the train-lamenting most no doubt,
The forty cents it took to feel then out.