Methinks that clerics, the whole world through, will do much as their bosses do, for which they're not to blame; for emulation is a part, in office, drawing room and mart, of this weird human game.
I often go to Jimpson's store; I blow in twice a day or more to buy my prunes and things. Old Jimpson is a joyous jay; he hustles around the livelong day, he whistles and he sings. I like to watch the blamed old chump; I like to see him on the jump, he is so full of steam; and all his clerks have caught his style; they hump around with cheerful smile, and do not loaf or dream.
When I blow into Jimpson's lair they all seem glad to see me there and anxious for my trade; they give me brisk attention then, and sing the chorus, "Come again!" when from the shop I fade.
Jim Clinker has another store. Jim Clinker's head seem always sore, he grumbles and he scowls; and all his clerks have caught that trick; they gloom around the store like sick or broken-hearted owls. When I go in to buy some tea, a languid salesman waits on me as though it were a crime to rouse him from his sour repose, his brooding over secret woes, and occupy his time.
If Clinker's clerks to Jimpson went, they soon would shake their discontent, and carol like the birds; if Jimpson's clerks for Clinker toiled their optimism would be spoiled; they'd hand out doleful words.
And so I say, and say some more, that all the salesmen in a store will emulate their boss; if he is sour on all the works, you may be sure his string of clerks will be a total loss.
"Love your neighbor as yourself," was a motto famed of yore; now it's placed upon the shelf, with about a thousand more; now the child on mother's knee, sees the lovelight in her eyes, while she says: "Where'er you be, boil the germs and swat the flies!" In the olden golden days, preachers told the sacred tale of poor Jonah's erring ways, and his journey in the whale; of the lions in their den, and of Daniel, good and wise; now they preach this creed to men: "Boil the germs and swat the flies!" When my dying eyelids close, and the world is growing dim, while I'm turning up my toes, I may ask to hear a hymn; and the people by my bed, they will sing, with streaming eyes, while each humbly bows his head: "Boil the germs and swat the flies!"
I sit in my cushioned motor, indulging in wise remarks, concerning the outraged voter crushed down by the money sharks. We burdened and weary toilers are ground by the iron wheels of soulless, despotic spoilers, and bruised by the tyrants' heels. They're flaunting their corsair mottoes while treading upon our toes, and some of us can't have autos or trotters or things like those. I know of a worthy neighbor who lives in a humble cot, and after long years of labor he hasn't a single yacht!
While eating my dinner humble—of porterhouse steak and peas, and honey from bees that bumble, and maybe imported cheese—I think, with a bitter feeling, of insolent money kings, who, drunk with their wealth and reeling, condemn me to eat such things. The pirate and banknote monger still gloat o'er their golden stacks, while I must appease my hunger with oysters and canvasbacks. The plutocrat has his chuffer, a minion of greed and pelf; the poor man must weep and suffer, and drive his own car himself.
The plutocrat homeward totters with diamonds to load his girls, and meanwhile my wife and daughters must struggle along with pearls. In silk, with a trademark Latin, the plutocrat's wife appears, and I can afford but satin to tog out my dimpled dears. The plute has a splendid palace, with pictures and Persian rugs; he drinks from a silver chalice and laughs at the poor men's jugs, and I, in my lowly cottage, that's shadowed by tree and vine, fill up on mock turtle pottage, with only three kinds of wine!
It's time for a revolution, to punish the wealthy ones! I'll furnish the elocution if you'll bring the bombs and guns!
Here's to the man who labors and does it with a song! He stimulates his neighbors and helps the world along!
I like the men who do things, who hustle and achieve; the men who saw and glue things, and spin and dig and weave.
Man earns his bread in sweat or in blood since Adam sinned; and bales of hay are better than are your bales of wind.
Man groans beneath his burden, beneath the chain he wears; and still the toiler's guerdon is worth the pain he bears.
For there's no satisfaction beneath the bending sky like that the man of action enjoys when night is nigh.
To look back o'er the winding and dark and rocky road, and know you bore your grinding and soul-fatiguing load—
As strong men ought to bear it, through all the stress and strife—that's the reward of merit—that is the balm of life!
I like the men who do things, who plow and sow and reap, who build and delve and hew things while dreamers are asleep.
We sat around the stove discoursing of mighty deeds that we had done; of struggling up the Alps and forcing our way to summits then unwon; of fights with lions and hyenas, of facing grim and ghostly shapes, of dodging bailiffs and subpoenas, and many perilous escapes.
And one sat by, distraught and gloomy, and listened to each stirring tale; his beard was long, his eyes were rheumy, his nose was red, his aspect stale. And this old pilgrim, dour and hoary, on all our pleasure drew the noose; for, at the end of every story, he'd sadly ask: "What was the use?"
I told of how I went a-sailing to Europe in an open boat; the billows raved, the winds were wailing till I could scarcely keep afloat. The salt sea spray was on my features; I heard King Neptune's angry shouts; I fought with whales and other creatures, and was pursued by waterspouts. I sailed those seas for weeks together, and bore my life in either hand, and very often doubted whether I'd ever bring my boat to land. But still, resolved on winning glory, I sailed along like Captain Loose. The old man broke into my story, and mildly asked: "What was the use?"
Jones told of how, appareled thinly (the thirst for glory warmed his breast), he scaled the heights of Mount McKinley and placed our flag upon its crest. He placed the flag to thwart the scorner, the doubter, and the man obtuse; and then the old man in the corner looked up and asked: "What was the use?"
Brown told of how a cask he entered and floated o'er the Horseshoe Falls, and how all eyes for months were centered on him; in cottages and halls the people joined to sing his praises or level at his head abuse; the old man heard his burning phrases, and sadly asked: "What was the use?"
We smote him roundly in our anger, resolved to cook his ancient goose, and still, above the din and clangor, we heard him ask, "What is the use?"
It is not mine the world to roam; when I was born the Fates decreed that I should always stay at home, and deal in hay and bran and feed. For mighty deeds I have no chance while I am rustling in my store; and yet my life has its romance, and I've adventures by the score.
For evening comes, and then, serene, to my abode I take my way, and grab this good old magazine, and leave the world of bran and hay. Through Arctic wildernesses cold, I follow the explorers' train, or seeking go for pirate's gold along the storied Spanish Main. Oft, by the miner's struggling lamp, I count the nuggets I have won; or in the cowboys' wind-swept camp indulge in wild athletic fun. The big round world is all for me, brought to me by the sprightly tale; o'er every strange and distant sea my phantom ship has learned to sail, I travel in all neighborhoods where daring man has left his tracks; I am the hunter in the woods, I am the woodman with his ax. I am the grim, effective sleuth who goes forth in a rare disguise, and quickly drags the shining truth from out a mountain range of lies. I am the watcher of the roads, the highwayman of wold and moor, relieving rich men of their loads, to give a rakeoff to the poor. I am the hero of the crowds, as, on my trusty aeroplane, I cleave a pathway through the clouds, to Milky Way and Charles's Wain. I am the pitcher known to fame; I pitch as though I worked by Steam, and in the last and crucial game I win the pennant for my team. I am the white man's final hope, on whom his aspirations hinge, and, notwithstanding all the dope, I knock the daylights from the dinge.
I am the man of action when, with lamplight gloating o'er the scene, I bask at leisure in my den, and read my fav'rite magazine. And so all day I stay at home attending to the treadmill grind; but when night comes afar I roam, and leave the workday world behind.
"I would like a situation. I have hunted for it long," said a youth who looked discouraged; "everything that is is wrong; there is no demand for labor, no respect for willing hands, hence the people who are idle are as frequent as the sands. I have waited in the pool hall through the long and weary day, and no lucrative position seemed to come along that way; I have stood upon the corner, smoking at my trusty cob, but no merchant came to hire me, though all knew I had no job; I have sat on every doorstep that against me wasn't fenced, you could scarcely find a building that I haven't leaned against; I have smoked a thousand stogies, I have chewed a cord of plug, I have shaken dice with dozens, I have touched each cider jug, to sustain my drooping spirits while I waited for a berth, with some up-to-date employer who'd appreciate my worth. But the world is out of kilter and the country's out of plumb, and the poor downtrodden voter finds that things are on the bum."
New songs are made in long array; we learn and sing them,—for a day, and then they fade and die away. But when the long, sad day is through, refreshing as the evening dew, are those old songs our fathers knew. New books, in rich and gorgeous dress, are coming hourly from the press, and charm by all their lovliness. But when from bench or desk we roam, to find the resting place at home, we read the old, old treasured tome. New friends are made at every reach of our long road to Styx's beach; new friends of warm and pleasant speech. But when life's sun is in the West, and feet are tired and hearts oppressed, the old time friend seems always best.
When a man has got a grievance that is keeping him awake, some old moldy, tiresome trouble that has made his innards ache, then he comes a-callyhooting to the printing-office door, for he wants to share his trouble with the humble editore.
When a man has got a hobby that has put him on the bum, then the people flee a-shrieking when they chance to see him come; but he knows one weary mortal who must suffer and endure, so he comes to share his theories with the lowly editure.
When a man has got a story that with age was stiff and stark when old Father Noah told it to the people in the ark, then he comes, a-bubbling over, to the Weekly Bugle's lair, for he wants to share his gladness with the soulful editaire.
O, he's always freely giving of the things that make us tired, and he's often pretty stingy with the things that are desired; he might bring a ray of sunlight to a life that's sad and drear, if he'd give the absent treatment to the heartsick editeer.
Perhaps you've heard of old Tom Tinkle, who went to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, and slept for thirty years; he woke the other day, and gazing around him on the sights amazing, his soul was filled with fears.
The Sleeper WakesThe Sleeper Wakes
The Sleeper WakesThe Sleeper Wakes
"What world is this?" he asked, in terror; "what life, of which I'm now a sharer? What globe do we infest? Oh, is it Saturn, Mars or Venus? How many planets are between us and good old Mother Earth? What mighty bird is that a-soaring—I seem to hear its pinions roaring, it scoots along so fast? Old Earth, with all her varied features, had no such big, outlandish creatures around, from first to last."
"It is an airship, Thomas Tinkle," I answered him; "a modern wrinkle, just one of many score which were by scientists invented to make the people more contented since you began to snore."
I told him of the wireless system and other wonders—he had missed 'em, since he was sound asleep; of submarines which sink and travel serenely o'er the mud and gravel beneath the raging deep.
"You can't convince me," said the waker, "that 'tis the earth—you are a faker, and deal in fairy tales; no man could soar away up yonder, like some blamed albatross or condor on metal wings or sails. And as for sending long dispatches from Buffalo clear down to Natchez, the same not being wired, if that's done here it's not the planet whereon I lived when mortals ran it; your stories make me tired. But what are these rip-snorting wagons? We must be in the land of dragons! I never saw the like! So riotously are they scooting, so wildly are they callyhooting they fairly burn the pike!"
I told him they were merely autos whose drivers lived up to their mottoes that speed laws are in vain; and other miracles amazing with delicate and pointed phrasing I started to explain. I told of triumphs most astounding, of things which should be quite confounding to resurrected men; but in the middle of my soaring I heard old Thomas Tinkle snoring—he'd gone to sleep again.
A well-fed horse drove into town, behind a span of ancient men, whose knees were sore from falling down and striving to get up again; their poor old ribs were bare of meat, and they had sores upon their necks; there wasn't, on the village street, a tougher looking pair of wrecks. And so they shambled up the street, a spectre harnessed with a ghost; the horse descended from his seat, and left them standing by a post. And there they stood through half the night, and shook and shivered in the tugs, the while their master, in delight, was shaking dice with other plugs. And there they died, of grief and cold—no more they'll haul the heavy plow; their master said, when he was told: "They cost blamed little, anyhow!"
Now Washington is swarming with men of sterling worth, all bent upon reforming the heaven and the earth; they come from far Savannah, they come from Texarkana, and points in Indiana, with loud yet seemly mirth. They're come from far Alaska, where show is heaped on snow; they've journeyed from Nebraska where commoners do grow; the famed, the wise, the witty, the timid, and the gritty have come from Kansas City and also Broken Bow. Their battle shout is thrilling as they go marching by, and every man is willing at once to bleed and die; to guarantee this nation a fine Administration he'd take a situation or kill himself with pie. The editors of journals are marching in the throng; and old and war-worn colonels are teetering along; and friends of Andrew Jackson and Jefferson, now waxin' a trifle old, are taxin' their dusty throats with song. No wonder Woodrow Wilson, as this great crowd appears, his silken kerchief spills on some proud and grateful tears; the ranks of colonels face him—such loyalty must brace him, and from dejection chase him in future pregnant years. No office need go begging before this mighty host; he need not go a-legging for masters of the post; he has to do no pleading; they bring the help he's needing; of dying and of bleeding they make a modest boast. And so he views the strangers from Maryland and Maine, the tall, bewhiskered grangers who till the Western plain; the men from desks and foyers, the sheepmen and the sawyers, the lumberjacks and lawyers, all come to ease the strain; he views the dusty millers from Minnesota land; the shining social pillars from Boston's sacred strand; the men of hill and valley around his standard rally (and on the snaps keep tally), each with a helping hand. "My fears are in the distance," is Woodrow's grateful song; "what foe can make resistance against this mighty throng? So let us, lawyer, farmer, ex-plute, and social charmer, gird on our snow-white armor, and paralyze each wrong!"
Before a wooden idol two heathen knelt and prayed; it was their day of bridal, the savage and the maid. "We two have come together, to journey through the years, in calm and stormy weather, in sunshine and in tears. O idol most exalted, protect us on our way, and may our feet be halted from going far astray. This maid," the bridegroom muttered, "is fresh from Nature's hands; her boudoir is not cluttered with strings and pins and bands; she does not paint her features, or wear rings on her paws; she's one of Nature's creatures, and lives by Nature's laws. Her foot, she does not force it into a misfit shoe; nor does she wear a corset to squeeze her frame in two. That frame has got upon it no clothes she does not need; she wears no bughouse bonnet that makes man's bosom bleed. This maid, this weaker vessel, has movements swift and free, and she can run and wrestle, and she can climb a tree. And it she shows a yearning to emulate the whites, our good old customs spurning, pursuing vain delights, O idol stern and oaken, take thou thy sceptre dread, and may the same be broken upon her silly head."
"This bridegroom," said the maiden, "untutored is and rude, but still he is not laden with habits vain and lewd. I hope to see him trundle each evening to his kraal, and not blow in his bundle for long cold pints of ale. With my consent he'll never get next the slot machine, or use his best endeavor to burn up gasoline. No tailor hath arrayed him, no valet hath defaced! He stands as Nature made him, broad-chested, slim of waist! And he can swim the Niger, or rob a lion's lair, or whip a full-grown tiger at Reno or elsewhere! And if he would abandon our simple heathen ways, and learn to place his hand on some foolish white men's craze, O idol, in your dudgeon, obey his bride's behest! Take up your big spiked bludgeon, and swat him galley-west!"
In public I talk of Milton and give him ecstatic praise, and say that I love to ponder for hours o'er his living lays; I speak of his noble epic, that jewel which proudly shines, and quote from his splendid sonnets (I know maybe twenty lines); but when I am home John Milton is left on the bookcase shelf; he's rather too dull for reading—you know how it is yourself; to lighten the weight of sorrow that over my spirit hangs, I dig up the works of Irwin or Nesbit or Kendrick Bangs.
I talk much of Thomas Hardy when I'm with the cultured crowd, and say that few modern writers so richly have been endowed; I speak of his subtle treatment of life and its grim distress, and quote from "The Trumpet Major" or spiel a few lines from "Tess." But when I am in my chamber, where no one can see me read, remote from the highbrow people and all that the highbrows need, I never have known a longing to reach for the Hardy tomes; I put in a joyous evening with Watson and Sherlock Holmes.
I talk a good deal of Wagner in parlor and drawing room, and speak of the gorgeous fabrics he wove on his wondrous loom, the fabrics of sound and beauty, the wonderful scroll of tone, and say that this mighty genius remains in a class alone. I whistle "The Pilgrims' Chorus," and chortle of "Lohengrin," and say that all other music is merely a venial sin. But when at my own piano Susannah sits down to play, I beg her to cut out Wagner and shoo all his noise away. "I'm weary and worn and beaten; my spirits," I say, "are low; so give us some helpful music—a few bars of Jungle Joe!"
The fool and his money are parted, not long did they stay in cahoots; but the fool is the cheeriest-hearted and gladdest of human galoots. His neighbor is better and wiser, six figures might tell what he's worth; but O how folks wish the old miser would fall off the edge of the earth!
In olden times the gifted bard found life a pathway rough and hard. Starvation often was his goad, and some dark garret his abode, and there, when nights were long and chill, he sadly plied his creaking quill. He wrote of shepherds and their crooks, of verdant vales and babbling brooks, displaying artfully his lore—while bailiffs threatened at the door. And having wrought his best, he took with trembling hands his little book to lay before some haughty lord, and cringe around for a reward. Some times, perchance, he got a purse; anon he only drew a curse; and often in a prison yard the weary, debt-incumbered bard was herded with the squalid throng, and damned the shining peaks of song.
The world moves on. The bard today finds life a soft and easy way. If he elects to cut his hair he has the price and some to spare. Attired in purple, he goes by with hard boiled shirt and scrambled tie, and you can hear his bullion clank as he goes prancing to the bank. He writes no tame, insipid books of dairy maids or shepherds' crooks, of singing birds or burbling streams, or any other worn-out themes. Anon he touches up his lyre to boost a patent rubber tire, or sings a noble song that thrills concerning someone's beeswax pills. His lyre's a wonder to behold; its frame is pearl, its strings are gold. His sheetiron laurels never fade; the grocer's glad to get his trade. While he can make the muses sweat he'll never go to jail for debt.
He calmly puts his harp away, when he has toiled a 10-hour day, and softly sighs: "There's nothing wrong with this old graft of deathless song!"
They have planted him deep in a grave by the fence, where the sand burs are thick and the jimson is dense; he's sleeping at last, and as still as a mouse, held down by a boulder as big as a house, and the whangdoodle mourns in a neighboring tree, with a voice that's as sad as the sorrowing sea. They have planted him deep in the silt and the sand, with appropriate airs by the fife and drum band, and they joyfully yell when the sad rites are o'er: "Gosh ding him, he's taking his straw votes no more."
Old Griggins the grocer, has gone to the dump, and people who knew him say he was a chump; his prospects were fine when he opened his store, and customers brought him their bullion and ore, and bought his potatoes and pumpkins and peas, his milk and molasses, his chicory, cheese. But soon they went elsewhere to blow in their plunks, for Griggins turned out such a foolish old hunks; while others were rustling for shilling and pound, old Griggins the grocer kept fooling around.
He stood in the alley and ranted and tore, debating the tariff with some one next door; he roasted the tariff on spigots and spoons while customers waited to purchase some prunes; he argued that congress is out for the pelf, and left his trade palace to wait on itself. And patrons got huffy, their molars they ground, while Griggins the grocer was fooling around.
Old Griggins kept cases on sprinters and pugs, and talked of their records, while people with jugs were wishing he'd fill them with syrup or oil, and cut out his yarns, which were starting to spoil; he'd talk about Jeffries or Johnsing or Gotch for forty-five minutes or more by the watch, while customers jingled their coin in his store, and waited and waited, and sweated and swore. At last they would leave his old joint on the bound, while Griggins the grocer was fooling around.
The man who would win in these strenuous days must tend to his knitting in forty-five ways, be eager and hustling, with vim all athrob, his mind not afield, but intent on his job. The sheriff will come with his horse and his hound to talk with the man who keeps fooling around.
He is the press and the people, the sultan who rules the Turks; he is the bell in the steeple, and he is the whole blamed works. He is the hill and valley, the dawning, the dusk, the moon; he is the large white alley, he is the man in the moon. He is the soothing slumber, he is the soul awake, he is the big cucumber, that gives us the bellyache. He is the fire that quickens, the company that insures; he is the ill that sickens, and he is the thing that cures. He is the ruling Russian, and we are the groveling skates; he is the constitution, and he's the United States.
No boarding house, tavern or inn was in sight; so into a cavern went Bruce, in sore plight. By enemies hunted, a price on his head, and all his schemes shunted, he wished he was dead. "In vain my endeavor, repulsed my demands; I'll try again never—I throw up my hands!" And so he lay sighing and cussing his fate, and wished he was lying stone dead in a crate. A spider was spinning its web by the wall; now losing, now winning, now taking a fall; though often it tumbled, it breathed not a sob, nor crawfished nor grumbled, but stuck to its job. Then Bruce opened wider his eyes and exclaimed: "That dodgasted spider has made me ashamed! I'm but a four-flusher to sit here and whine! This morning must usher in triumphs of mine!"
He canned all his wailing and cut out the frown, and went forth a-smiling, and won a large crown!
And legions of fellows with tears in their eyes, who wear out their bellows with groaning and sighs, who think they are goners, ordained to the dump, would harvest some honors if they would just hump! The spiders are teaching, the same as of old; the spiders are preaching a gospel of gold: "Though baffled and broken, O children of men, let grief be unspoken—go at it again!"
King Skeptic wears his modern crown, his stern, destructive law prevails; he's tearing all our idols down, disproving all our fav'rite tales. Is there a legend you hold dear, some legend of the long ago? King Skeptic hears it with a sneer, and digs up history to show that things of that sort never chanced, and never could, and never will. "We have," he says, "so much advanced, that fairy tales don't fill the bill. No faked-up tales of knightly acts, no Robin Hood romance for me; the only things worth while are Facts, Statistics, and the Rule of Three."
With diagrams he shows full well that old-time tales are things to scorn; that such a man as William Tell, in liklihood, was never born. If Gessler lived and had a hat, he didn't hang it on a pole; the rules of Euclid show us that—so goes King Skeptic's rigmarole. But, granting that he had a lid, and hung it on a pole awhile, and granting that the people did bow down to reverence that tile, this does not prove that William shot an apple through an apple's core, and so the anecdote is rot—don't let us hear it any more.
One-eyed Horatius never held the bridge beside his comrades bold, while Sextus and his foemen yelled—because there was no bridge to hold. With Fact King Skeptic pounds your head, and prods you with it to the hilt, and shows Horatius had been dead ten years before the bridge was built. "He fell not in the Tiber's foam, performed no feats of arms sublime. I know! The city clerk of Rome sent me the records of that time!"
Mazeppa's ride was all a joke, as all the statisticians know; the horse he rode was city broke, and stopped whene'er he whispered "whoa." Most luckily, the village vet wrote down the facts with rugged power; Mazeppa simply made a bet the horse could go three miles an hour; he wasn't strapped upon its back, no perils dire did him befall; he rode around a kite-shaped track, and lost his bet, and that was all.
And so it goes; you can't relate a legend of heroic acts but that the Skeptic then will state objections based on Deadly Facts. Romance is but a total loss, and all the joy of life departs; we've nothing left but Charlie Ross, and he'll turn up, to break our hearts.
I've gathered roses and the like, in many glad and golden Junes; but now, as down the world I hike, my weary hands are filled with prunes. I've gathered roses o'er and o'er, and some were white, and some were red; but when I took them to the store, the grocer wanted eggs instead. I gathered roses long ago, in other days, in other scenes; and people said: "You ought to go, and dig the weeds out of your beans." A million roses bloomed and died, a million more will die today; that man is wise who lets them slide, and gathers up the bales of hay.
The airship is a thing achieved; it has its rightful place, as well as any autocart that ever ran a race. The farmer, in the coming years, when eggs to town he brings, will flop along above the trees, upon his rusty wings. The doctor, when he has a call, from patients far or near, will quickly strap his pinions on, and hit the atmosphere. And airship racing then will be the sport to please the crowds; there'll be racecourses overhead, and grandstands in the clouds. The umpire, on his patent wings, will hover here and there; the fans, with rented parachutes, will prance along the air; the joyous shrieks of flying sports will keep the welkin hot, and soaring cops will blithely chase the scorching aeronaut. We'll soon be living overhead, our families and all; and then we'll only need the earth to land on when we fall.
A forty-foot constrictor once was swallowing a goat, and having lots of trouble, for the horns stuck in his throat. And then a warthog came along, and said: "Oh, foolish snake! To swallow all your victuals whole is surely a mistake. It puts your stomach out of plumb, your liver out of whack, and gives you all the symptoms in the latest almanac. If serpents for abundant health would have a fair renown, they'll chew a mouthful half an hour before they take it down. Eat slowly, with a tranquil mind and heart serene beneath, and always use a finger bowl, and always pick your teeth. I'm reading up Woods Hutchinson and Fletcher and those guys, and following the rules they make, which are extremely wise, and oh, it pains me to the quick, and jars my shrinking soul, to see a foolish snake like you absorbing dinners whole!"
The serpent got his dinner down, with whiskers, horns and feet, then slept three weeks; then looked around for something more to eat. And, having killed a jabberwock, and found it fat and nice, he thought he'd eat according to the warthog's sage advice.
Ah, never more that snake is seen upon his native heath! The little serpents tell the tale of how he starved to death!
Moral:
The counsel of the great may help the man next door, 'tis true, and yet turn out to be a frost when followed up by you.
You've heard of Richard Randle Rox? He died; they put him in a box, and lowered him into a grave, and said: "He'll surely now behave."
For years this fertile Richard penned books, rhymes and essays without end. His helpful, moral dope was seen in every uplift magazine, and people used to wonder how the wheels within that bulging brow produced such countless bales of thought, such wondrous wealth of tomyrot; and folks chewed cloves and cotton waste to try to take away the taste.
At last he died before his time—killed off by an ingrowing rhyme. The mourners laid him on his pall, his three assorted names and all, and said: "Doggone him! Now he'll stop this thing of writing helpful slop." He got the finest grave in town, and marble things to hold him down.
Long years have passed since R. R. Rox was placed in silver-mounted box; and does he rest in peace? Instead, he's working harder now he's dead. New books are coming from his pen until the chastened sons of men look round, their eyelids red with grief—look round, imploring for relief. "Is there no way," so wails the host, "to lay this Richard Randle's ghost?"
The pugilist, tall and majestic, and proud of his numerous scars, was telling of foreign, domestic, and all kinds of Homeric wars. His hearers were standing before him in attitudes speaking of awe, for what could they do but adore him, the man with the prognathous jaw?
"My make-up," he said, "rather queer is, I've never seen others that way; I simply don't know what a fear is; I really rejoice in the fray, I guess I'm the champion glarer, my glance seems to wilt all my foes; I've seen fellows crumple with terror before we had got down to blows. This made me so often the victor; no qualms in my bosom I feel; I don't fear a boa constrictor—my heart is an engine of steel."
The ConquerorThe Conqueror
The ConquerorThe Conqueror
And so of his feats superhuman he talked in a voice ringing loud, until a small, fiery-eyed woman came elbowing up through the crowd. Her voice, like her person, was spindling, but Hercules heard when she called: "Come home, now, and cut up some kindling, or I will be snatching you bald!" No more of his triumphs he lilted, like Spartacus spieling in Rome; the steel hearted warrior wilted, and followed his conquerer home.
If Ananias lived today and ran the corner store, he couldn't keep the wolf away from his old creaking door. For men who spend their hard-earned rocks won't patronize the man who must forever, when he talks, make truth an also ran.
I bought a whole new suit of clothes from Bilks, across the street. He said to me: "Such rags as those just simply can't be beat. They ornament the clothier's trade, and eke the tailor's shears; they will not shrink, they will not fade, they'll last a hundred years. Go forth," said Bilks, "upon the street, in all your pomp and pride, and every pretty girl you meet will wish she was your bride."
So I went forth in brave array, the city's one best bet. There was a little shower that day, and I got slightly wet. And then the truth was driven in that my new rags were punk. Alas, my friends, it was a sin the way those trousers shrunk! The buttons from my waistcoat flew with dull and sickening crack; my coat soon changed from brown to blue and then split up the back.
Old Bilks gold-bricked me in that deal, but does his system pay? He'll never get another wheel from me till Judgment Day. The kopeck that you win by guile may swell your roll today, but in the clammy afterwhile it melts that roll away.
Your arguments for modern things with me cannot avail; my father reaped his grain by hand and thrashed it with a flail; then who am I to strike new paths and buy machinery? The methods good enough for dad are good enough for me! I want no hydrant by my house—such doodads I won't keep! My father drew the water from a well three furlongs deep, and skinned his hands and broke his back a-pulling at the rope, and methods that my father used will do for me, I hope! Don't talk of your electric light; a candle's all I need; my father always went to bed when 'twas too dark to read; I want no books or magazines to clutter up my shack; my father never read a thing but Johnson's almanac. A bathroom? Blowing wealth for that ridiculous appears; my father never used to bathe, and lived for ninety years. I care not for your "progress" talk, "reform" or other tricks; my father never used to vote or fuss with politics; he never cared three whoops in Troy which side should win or lose, and I'm content to go his gait, and wear my father's shoes.