A Life By The Cabin Fire
Air: A life on the ocean wave 
Put's Original California Songster
Sacramento: Gardiner & Kirk, 1854
A life by the cabin fire,
A home in the northern mines,
We'll make a pile and retire,
Won't that be charming and fine?
We'll roam the Sierra Nevada
'Till we kill the grizzly bear,
And send the fur home to the ladies,
For pantalets — how it will wear!
CHORUS
A life by the cabin fire,
A home in the northern mines;
We'll make a pile and retire,
Won't that be charming and fine?
The city's no longer in view,
The ground is beginning to rise;
If stories they told us are true,
How the lumps will dazzle our eyes!
We built us a cabin so fine,
Got grub to last us a while,
Commenced in the morning to mine,
But at night fell short of a pile.
A life by the cabin fire, etc.
We soon had a row in the camp,
For no one was willing to cook,
We kicked out a miserable scamp,
We did it as neat as a book.
The rest of us could'nt agree,
On the manner of setting the tom;
'Twas just as I knew it would be
Before we started from home.
A life by the cabin fire, etc.
The doctor would give us advice,
And the lawyer would argue the point,
But we couldn't get rid of our lice,
No matter how often we'd oint,
The clerk, with his breeches worn out
Look'd more like a Panama ape,
That you'd see on the Chagres route—
What a change from needles and tape!
A life by the cabin fire, etc.
We hung on a kettle of beans,—
The diet we miners admire,—
The last of our grub and our means,
And they tipp'd o'er in the fire.
So then we divided the tools,
And each took a different route,
Concluded we'd acted like fools,
But none of us died of the gout.
A life by the cabin fire, etc.
The doctor and lawyer combined,
And agreed that the doctor should kill,
And the lawyer should come on behind,
And collect the exorbitant bill.
The preacher could not make a pile
At the gospel he came out to preach,
He fiddled and gambled awhile
But money kept out of his reach.
A life by the cabin fire. etc.
The cabin is now out of sight,
That stood on the western slope,
We left it for nothing but spite,
For that was our only hope.
The most of the party went home,
Disgusted with what they had seen,
And I left behind to roam,—
"Oh, wasn't I wonderful green!"
A life by the cabin fire, etc.
Score from the Lester S. Levy Collection
MIDI file of "A Life On the Ocean Wave " from Contemplator.com