The gingham dog went “Bow-wow-wow!”
And the calico cat replied “Mee-ow!”
The air was littered, an hour or so,
With bits of gingham and calico.

These lines come from Eugene Field’s popular children’s poem “The Duel,” part of his late‑19th‑century “child verse” that helped make him famous as the so‑called “poet of childhood.” Field (1850–1895), a Chicago newspaper columnist, often wrote whimsical, mock-heroic poems about nursery objects and bedtime imaginings. “The Duel” stages a comic battle between two toys—a gingham dog and a calico cat—using exaggerated sound effects and the language of epic combat, a style that suited the era’s taste for light verse meant to be read aloud to children.

The passage turns a child’s playroom fantasy into a parody of serious warfare: the dog barks, the cat yowls, and the “duel” escalates until the room is “littered” with scraps of cloth. The humor depends on incongruity—ferocious animal noises coming from harmless fabric toys—and on the mock-tragic aftermath, as if a grand battle has been fought. At the same time, the poem captures how intensely real such dramas can feel in a child’s imagination, where ordinary objects become characters and conflict can be both thrilling and safely contained within make-believe.