American Old Time Song Lyrics: 33 Mistakes Are Apt To Happen In The Best Of Families

Theater, Music-Hall, Nostalgic, Irish & Historic Old Songs, Volume 33

MISTAKES ARE APT TO HAPPEN IN THE BEST OF FAMILIES.
Copyright, 1891, by M. Witmark & Sons.
Written, Composed and Sung by Jas. McAvoy.

I've studied human nature since I'm old enough to know;
I have picked up many pointers now and then;
And I mix with every kind and creed as here and there I go.
And I call the chances nine times out of ten.
Still I've made remarks and blunders, that's before I gave a thought;
I've regretted after what I've said and done,
But the little thing that squares me up when openly I'm caught,
I use it for my best and only one.

Chorus.
That is, mistakes are apt to happen in the best of families,
And the strictest folks at times forget their punctualities,
But it's a good old rhyme to square yourself in all emergencies,
That mistakes are apt to happen in the best of families.

In street-care I have often stepped on other people's feet,
And umbrellas I've picked up that were not mine;
And folks I've disappointed that I've often said I'd meet,
And I've also paid for beer instead of wine.
In church I put plugged nickels in the contribution-box,
And I've celebrated New Years Patrick's Day;
Strange ladies that I thought I knew I've followed them for blocks,
And finding I was wrong, of course I'd say:-Chorus.

I have often gone in dry-goods stores and asked them for a drink;
In the dark I took the servant for my wife;
I would kiss her every time we'd meet, I didn't stop to think,
Oh, I've taken desperate chances on my life.
I rung my neighbor's bell one night, his wife she let me in,
She thought it was her husband, so she said;
She never knew the difference 'till she felt my beardless chin,
And when she lit the gas she fainted dead.

Chorus.
Mistakes are apt to happen in the best of families;
Every day I think I am getting absent-minded by degrees,
But to-day we found our locks alike-they fit each other's keys;
So mistakes are apt to happen in the best of fnmilies.

Wonders they will never cease-they happen every day;
No chick nor child have I to call my own;
There's nothing calls me papa, yet it has not come my way-
No not until this evening have I known.
Well, the nurse she fairly frightened me when I came home to tea,
And with all the other neighbors stood in line;
They brought to me a baby boy and said it looked like me,
But there's not the least resemblance I could find.

Chorus.
For mistakes are apt to happen In the best of families,
And a man may have his doubts, of course, and think just as he pleases,
But when we read and hear about so many mysteries,
Well mistakes are apt to happen in the best of families.