[Illustration:  SAM WALTER FOSS]

He had charge of the Public Library at Somerville, Massachusetts, and his influence in library matters extended all over New England.

His poems are marked by simplicity.  Most of his songs are written in New England dialect which he has used with unsurpassed effect.  But this poetry was always of the simplest kind, of the appealing nature which reaches the heart.  Of his work and his aim, he said in his first volume: 

“It is not the greatest singer
Who tries the loftiest themes,
He is the true joy bringer
Who tells his simplest dreams,
He is the greatest poet
Who will renounce all art
And take his heart and show it
To any other heart;
Who writes no learned riddle,
But sings his simplest rune,
Takes his heart-strings for a fiddle,
And plays his easiest tune.”

Mr. Foss always had to recite the following poem when he called at Breezy Meadows

THE CONFESSIONS OF A LUNKHEAD

I’m a lunkhead, an’ I know it; ‘taint no use to squirm an’ talk,
I’m a gump an’ I’m a lunkhead, I’m a lummux, I’m a gawk,
An’ I make this interduction so that all you folks can see
An’ understan’ the natur’ of the critter thet I be.

  I allus wobble w’en I walk, my j’ints are out er gear,
  My arms go flappin’ through the air, jest like an el’phunt’s ear;
  An’ when the womern speaks to me I stutter an’ grow weak,
  A big frog rises in my throat, an’ he won’t let me speak.

  Wall, that’s the kind er thing I be; but in our neighborhood
  Lived young Joe Craig an’ young Jim Stump an’ Hiram Underwood. 
  We growed like corn in the same hill, jest like four sep’rit stalks;
  For they wuz lunkheads, jest like me, an’ lummuxes and gawks.

  Now, I knew I wuz a lunkhead; but them fellers didn’t know,
  Thought they wuz the biggest punkins an’ the purtiest in the row. 
  An’ I, I uster laff an’ say, “Them lunkhead chaps will see
  W’en they go out into the worl’ w’at gawky things they be.”

  Joe Craig was a lunkhead, but it didn’t get through his pate;
  I guess you all heerd tell of him—­he’s governor of the state;
  Jim Stump, he blundered off to war—­a most uncommon gump—­
  Didn’t know enough to know it—­’an he came home General Stump.

  Then Hiram Underwood went off, the bigges’ gawk of all,
  We hardly thought him bright enough to share in Adam’s fall;
  But he tried the railroad biz’ness, an’ he allus grabbed his share,—­
  Now this gawk, who didn’t know it, is a fifty millionaire.

  An’ often out here hoein’ I set down atween the stalks,
  Thinkin’ how we four together all were lummuxes an’ gawks,
  All were gumps and lunkheads, only they didn’t know, yer see;
  An’ I ask, “If I hadn’ known it, like them other fellers there,
  Today I might be settin’ in the presidential chair.”