FLETCHERISM
I READ a screed by Brother Fletcher, on how we ought to chew our grub; I said, “It’s sensible, you betcher! I’ll emulate that thoughtful dub. No more like some old anaconda, I’ll swallow all my victuals whole; I’ll eat the sort of things I’m fond o’, but chew them up with heart and soul.” And now I’m always at the table, I have no time to do my chores; the horse is starving in the stable, the weeds are growing out o’ doors. My wife says, “Say, you should be doing some work around this slipshod place.” I answer her, “I’m busy chewing—canst see the motions of my face?” I have no time to hoe the taters, I have no time to mow the lawn; though chewing like ten alligators, I’m still behind, so help me, John! I chew the water I am drinking, I chew the biscuit and the bun; I’ll have to hire a boy, I’m thinking, to help me get my chewing done. Some day they’ll bear me on a stretcher out to the boneyard, where they plant, and send my teeth to Brother Fletcher, to make a necklace for his aunt.
FATHER TIME
TIME drills along, and, never stopping, winds up our spool of thread; the time to do our early shopping is looming just ahead. It simply beats old James H. Thunder how time goes scooting on; and now and then we pause and wonder where all the days have gone. When we are old a month seems shorter than did a week in youth; the years are smaller by a quarter, and still they shrink, forsooth. This busy world we throw our fits in will soon be ours no more; time hurries us, and that like blitzen, toward another shore. So do not make me lose a minute, as it goes speeding by; I want to catch each hour and skin it and hang it up to dry. A thousand tasks are set before me, important, every one, and if you stand around and bore me, I’ll die before they’re done. Oh, you may go and herd together, and waste the transient day, and talk about the crops and weather until the roosters lay, but I have work that long has beckoned, and any Jim or Joe who causes me to lose a second, I look on as a foe.
FIELD PERILS
THE farmer plants his field of corn—the kind that doesn’t pop—and hopes that on some autumn morn he’ll start to shuck his crop. And shuck his crop he often does, which is exceeding queer, for blights and perils fairly buzz around it through the year. I think it strange that farmers raise the goodly crops they do, for they are scrapping all their days against a deadly crew. To plant and till will not suffice; the men must strain their frames, to kill the bugs and worms and mice, and pests with Latin names. The cut worms cut, the chinchbugs chinch, the weevil weaves its ill, and other pests come up and pinch the corn and eat their fill. And then the rainworks go on strike, and gloom the world enshrouds, and up and down the burning pike the dust is blown in clouds. And if our prayers are of avail, and rain comes in the night, it often brings a grist of hail that riddles all in sight. And still the farmers raise their crops, and nail the shining plunk; none but the kicker stands and yawps, and what he says is bunk. If all men brooded o’er their woes, and looked ahead for grief, that gent would starve who gaily goes to thresh the golden sheaf.
JOY COMETH
I SAT and sighed, with downcast head, my heart consumed with sorrow, and then my Aunt Jemima said: “I’m going home tomorrow!” I’d feared that she would never leave, her stay would be eternal, and that’s what made me pine and grieve, and say, “The luck’s infernal!” I thought my dark and gloomy skies no sunshine e’er would borrow, then Aunt Jemima ups and cries, “I’m going home tomorrow!” Thus oft the kindly gods confound the kickist and the carkist, and joy comes cantering around just when things seem the darkest. We all have aunts who come and stay until their welcome’s shabby, who eat our vittles day by day, until the purse is flabby; and when we think they’ll never go, or let us know what peace is, they up and dissipate our woe by packing their valises. The darkest hour’s before the dawn, and when your grief’s intensest, it is a sign ’twill soon be gone, not only hence, but hencest.
LIVING TOO LONG
I WOULD not care to live, my dears, much more than seven hundred years, if I should last that long; for I would tire of things in time, and life at last would seem a crime, and I a public wrong. Old Gaffer Goodworth, whom you know, was born a hundred years ago, and states the fact with mirth; he’s rather proud that he has hung around so long while old and young were falling off the earth. But when his boastful fit is gone, a sadness comes his face upon, that speaks of utter woe; he sits and broods and dreams again of vanished days, of long dead men, his friends of long ago. There is no loneliness so dread as that of one who mourns his dead in white and wintry age, who, when the lights extinguished are, the other players scattered far, still lingers on the stage. There is no solitude so deep as that of him whose friends, asleep, shall visit him no more; shall never ask, “How do you stack,” or slap him gaily on the back, as in the days of yore. I do not wish to draw my breath until the papers say that Death has passed me up for keeps; when I am tired I want to die and in my cosy casket lie as one whocalmly sleeps. When I am tired of dross and gold, when I am tired of heat and cold, and happiness has waned, I want to show the neighbor folk how gracefully a man can croak when he’s correctly trained.
FRIEND BULLSNAKE
THESE sunny days bring forth the snakes from holes in quarries, cliffs and brakes. The gentle bullsnake, mild and meek, sets forth his proper prey to seek; of all good snakes he is the best, with high ambitions in his breast; he is the farmer’s truest friend, because he daily puts an end to mice and other beasts which prey upon that farmer’s crops and hay. He is most happy when he feasts on gophers and such measly beasts; and, being six or eight feet high, when stood on end, you can’t deny that forty bullsnakes on a farm are bound to do the vermin harm. The bullsnake never hurts a thing; he doesn’t bite, he doesn’t sting, or wrap you in his slimy folds, and squeeze you till he busts all holds. As harmless as a bale of hay, he does his useful work all day, and when at night he goes to rest, he’s killed off many a wretched pest. And yet the farmers always take a chance to kill this grand old snake. They’ll chase three miles or more to end the labors of their truest friend. They’ll hobble forth from beds of pain to hack a bullsnake’s form in twain, and leave him mangled, torn and raw—which shows there ought to be a law.
DOUGHNUTS
I SEEK the high-class eating joint, when my old stomach gives a wrench, and there the waiters proudly point to bills of fare got up in French. I order this, and order that, in eagerness my face to feed, and oftentimes I break a slat pronouncing words I cannot read. And as I eat the costly greens, prepared by an imported cook, to other times and other scenes with reminiscent eyes I look. My mother never was in France, no foreign jargon did she speak, but how I used to sing and dance when she made doughnuts once a week! Oh, they were crisp and brown and sweet, and they were luscious and sublime, and I could stand around and eat a half a bushel at a time. The doughnuts that our mothers made! They were the goods, they were the stuff; we used to eat them with a spade and simply couldn’t get enough. And when I face imported grub, all loaded down with Choctaw names, I sigh and wish I had a tub of doughnuts, made by old-time dames. I do not care for fancy frills, but when the doughnut dish appears, I kick my hind feet o’er the thills, and whoop for joy, and wag my ears.
THE ILL WIND
THE cold wet rain kept sloshing down, and flooded yard and street. My uncle cried: “Don’t sigh and frown! It’s splendid for the wheat!” I slipped and fell upon the ice, and made my forehead bleed. “Gee whiz!” cried uncle, “this is nice! Just what the icemen need!” A windstorm blew my whiskers off while I was writing odes. My uncle said: “Don’t scowl and scoff—’twill dry the muddy roads!” If fire my dwelling should destroy, or waters wash it hence, my uncle would exclaim, with joy: “You still have got your fence!” When I was lying, sick to death, expecting every day that I must draw my final breath, I heard my uncle say, “Our undertaker is a jo, and if away you fade, it ought to cheer you up to know that you will help his trade.” And if we study uncle’s graft, we find it good and fair; how often, when we might have laughed, we wept and tore our hair! Such logic from this blooming land should drive away all woe; the thing that’s hard for you to stand, is good for Richard Roe.
APPROACH OF SPRING
THE spring will soon be here; the snow will disappear; the hens will cluck, the colts will buck, as will the joyous steer. How sweet an April morn! The whole world seems reborn; and ancient men waltz round again and laugh their years to scorn. And grave and sober dames forsake their quilting frames, and cut up rough, play blind man’s buff, and kindred cheerful games. The pastors hate to preach; the teachers hate to teach; they’d like to play baseball all day, or on the bleachers bleach. The lawyer tires of law; the windsmith rests his jaw; they’d fain forget the toil and sweat, and play among the straw. The spring’s the time for play; let’s put our work away, with joyous spiels kick up our heels, e’en though we’re old and gray. You see old Dobbin trot around the barnyard lot, with flashing eye and tail on high, his burdens all forgot. You see the muley cow that’s old and feeble now, turn somersaults and prance and waltz, and stand upon her brow. The rooster, old is he, and crippled as can be, yet on his toes he stands and crows “MyCountry, ’Tis of Thee.” Shall we inspired galoots have less style than the brutes? Oh, let us rise and fill the skies with echoing toot-toots.
STUDYING BOOKS
WITH deep and ancient tomes to toil, and burn the midnight Standard oil may seem a job forbidding; but it’s the proper thing to do, whene’er you have the time, if you would have a mind non-skidding. If one in social spheres would shine, he ought to cut out pool and wine, and give some time to study; load up with wisdom to the guards and read the message of the bards from Homer down to Ruddy. How often conversation flags, how oft the weary evening drags, when people get together, when they have sprung their ancient yawps about the outlook of the crops, the groundhog and the weather. How blest the gent who entertains, who’s loaded up his active brains with lore that’s worth repeating, the man of knowledge, who can talk of other things than wheat and stock and politics and eating! Our lives are lustreless and gray because we sweat around all day and think of naught but lucre; and when we’re at our inglenooks we never open helpful books, but fool with bridge or euchre. Exhausted by the beastly grind we do not try to store the mind with mattersworth the knowing; our lives are spent in hunting cash, and when we die we make no splash, and none regrets our going.
STRANGER THAN FICTION
IT’S strange that people live so long, remaining healthy, sound and strong, when all around us, everywhere, the germs and microbes fill the air. The more we read about the germs, in technical or easy terms, the stranger does it seem that we have so far dodged eternity. No wonder a poor mortal squirms; all things are full of deadly germs. The milk we drink, the pies we eat, the shoes we wear upon our feet, are haunts of vicious things which strive to make us cease to be alive. And yet we live on just the same, ignore the germs, and play our game. Well, that’s just it; we do not stew or fret o’er things we cannot view. If germs were big as hens or hawks, and flew around our heads in flocks, we’d just throw up our hands and cry: “It is no use—it’s time to die!” The evils that we cannot see don’t cut much ice with you and me. A bulldog by the garden hedge, with seven kinds of teeth on edge, will hand to me a bigger scare than all the microbes in the air. So let us live and have our fun, and woo and wed and blow our mon, and not acknowledge coward fright of anything that’s out of sight.
THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
BESIDE the road that leads to town the thistle thrives apace, and if you cut the blamed thing down, two more will take its place. The sunflowers flourish in the heat that kills the growing oats; the weeds keep living when the wheat and corn have lost their goats. The roses wither in the glare that keeps the prune alive, the orchards fail of peach and pear while cheap persimmons thrive. The good and useful men depart too soon on death’s dark trip; they just have fairly made a start when they must up and skip. A little cold, a little heat will quickly kill them off; a little wetting of their feet, a little hacking cough; they’re tender as the blushing rose of evanescent bloom; too quickly they turn up their toes and slumber in the tomb. And yet the world is full of scrubs who don’t know how to die, a lot of picayunish dubs, who couldn’t, if they’d try. Year after year, with idle chums, they hang around the place, until at last their age becomes a scandal and disgrace. And thus the men of useful deeds die off, while no-goods thrive; you can’t kill off the human weeds, nor keep the wheat alive.
DISCONTENT
THE man who’s discontented, whose temper’s always frayed, who keeps his shanty scented with words that are decayed, would do as much complaining if all the gods on high upon his head were raining ambrosia, gold, and pie. The man who busts his gallus because his house is cheap, would rant if in a palace he could high wassail keep. The vexed and vapid voter who throws a frequent fit because his neighbors motor while he must hit the grit, would have as many worries, his soul would wear its scars, if he had seven surreys and twenty motor cars. The man who earns his living by toiling in the ditch, whose heart is unforgiving toward the idle rich, who hates his lot so humble, his meal of bread and cheese, would go ahead and grumble on downy beds of ease. Contentment is a jewel that some wear in the breast, and life cannot be cruel so long as it’s possessed! This gem makes all things proper, the owner smiles and sings; it may adorn a pauper, and be denied to kings.
SILVER THREADS
LIFE is fading fast away, silver threads are on my brow; will you love me when I’m gray, as you love me now, my frau? Will you love me when I’m old, and my temper’s on the blink, and I sit around and scold till I drive the folks to drink? When I have the rheumatiz, and lumbago, and repeat, and the cusswords fairly sizz as I nurse my swollen feet; when a crutch I have to use, since my trilbys are so lame that they will not fit my shoes, will you love me just the same? When the gout infests my toes, and all vanished are my charms, will you kiss me on the nose, will you clasp me in your arms? Silver threads are in the gold, life will soon have run its lease; I’d be glad if I were told that your love will still increase when my high ambition fails, and my hopes are all unstrung, and I tell my tiresome tales of the days when I was young; when I sit around the shack making loud and dismal moan, of the stitches in my back, and my aching collar bone; when the asthma racks my chest so I cannot speak a word, will you fold me to your breast, saying I’m your honeybird?When I’m palsied, stiff and sere, when I’m weary of the game, tell me, O Jemima dear, will you love me just the same?
MOVING ON
WE foolish folk are discontented with things where’er we chance to dwell. “The air,” we say, “is sweeter scented in some far distant dale or dell.” And so we pull up stakes and travel to seek the fair and promised land, and find our Canaan is but gravel, a wilderness of rocks and sand. “Across the hills the fields are greener,” we murmur, “and the view more fair; the water of the brooks is cleaner, and fish grow larger over there.” And so we leave our pleasant valley, from all our loving friends we part, and o’er the stony hills we sally, to reach a land that breaks the heart. “There’s gold in plenty over yonder,” we say, “and we shall seek the mines.” Then from our cheerful homes we wander, far from our fig trees and our vines; a little while our dreams we cherish, and think that we can never fail; but, tired at last, we drop and perish, and leave our bones upon the trail. How happy is the man whose nature permits him to enjoy his home, who, till compelled by legislature, declines in paths afar to roam! There is no region better, fairer, than that homeregion that you know; there are no zephyrs sweeter, rarer, than those which through your galways blow.
THE OLD PRAYER
WHEN the evening shadows fall, oftentimes do I recall other evenings, far away, when, aweary of my play, I would climb on granny’s knee (long since gone to sleep has she), clasp my hands and bow my head, while the simple lines I said, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Journeyed long have I since then, in this sad, gray world of men; I have seen with aching heart, comrades to their rest depart; friends have left me, one by one, for the shores beyond the sun. Still the Youth enraptured sings, and the world with gladness rings, but the faces I have known all are gone, and I’m alone. All alone, amid the throng, I, who’ve lived and journeyed long. Loneliness and sighs and tears are the wages of the years. Who would dread the journey’s end, when he lives without a friend? Now the sun of life sinks low; in a little while I’ll go where my friends and comrades wait for me by the jasper gate. Though the way be cold and stark, I shall murmur, in the dark, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
INTO THE SUNLIGHT
OH cut out the vain repining, cease thinking of dole and doom! Come out where the sun is shining, come out of the cave of gloom! Come out of your hole and borrow a package of joy from me, and say to your secret sorrow, “I’ve no longer use for thee!” For troubles, which are deluding, are timorous beasts, I say; they stick to the gent who’s brooding, and flee from the gent who’s gay. The gateways of Eldorados are open, all o’er the earth; come out of the House of Shadows, and dwell in the House of Mirth. From Boston to far Bobcaygeon the banners of gladness float; oh, grief is a rank contagion, and mirth is the antidote. And most of our woes would perish, or leave us, on sable wings, if only we didn’t cherish and coddle the blame fool things. Long since would your woes have scampered away to their native fogs, but they have been fed and pampered like poodles or hairless dogs. And all of these facts should teach you it’s wise to be bright and gay; come out where the breeze can reach you, and blow all your grief away.
BLEAK DAYS
THE clouds are gray and grim today, the winds are sadly sighing; it seems like fall, and over all a sheet of gloom is lying. The dreary rain beats on the pane, and sounds a note of sorrow; but what’s the odds? The genial gods will bring us joy tomorrow. We have the mumps, the doctor humps himself around to cure it; we’re on the blink and often think we simply can’t endure it; to all who list we groan, I wist, and tell a hard-luck story; but why be vexed? Week after next we’ll all be hunkydory. The neighbor folks are tiresome blokes, they bore us and annoy us; with such folks near it’s amply clear that no one can be joyous; things would improve if they would move—we really do not need them; but let’s be gay! They’ll move away, and worse ones will succeed them. The world seems sad, sometimes, my lad, and life is a disaster; but do not roar; for every sore tomorrow brings a plaster. The fool, he kicks against the pricks, all optimism scorning; the wise man goes his way—he knows joy cometh in the morning.
THE GIVERS
THE great, fine men are oft obscure; they have no wide, resounding fame, that experts warrant to endure until the finish of the game. Old Clinkenbeard is such a man, and though he has no store of yen, he’s always doing what he can to help along his fellowmen. He has no millions to disburse, but when he meets a hungry guy, he digs a quarter from his purse, which buys the sinkers and the pie. The gifts of bloated millionaires mean nothing of a sacrifice; they sit around in easy chairs and count the scads they have on ice; if Croesus gives ten thousand bucks to help some college off the rocks, he still can have his wine and ducks—he has ten million in his box. The widow’s mite, I do not doubt, in heaven made a bigger splash than shekels Pharisees shelled out from their large wads of ill-gained cash. And so the poor man, when he breaks the only William in his pants, to buy some widow tea and cakes, is making angels sing and dance. In fertile soil he’s sowing seeds, and he shall reap a rich reward; for he who gives the coin he needs, is surely lending to the Lord.
GOOD OLD DAYS
HOW I regret the good old days, and all the pleasant, happy ways now perished from the earth! No more the worn breadwinner sings, no more the cottage rooftree rings with sounds of hearty mirth. The good old days! The cheerful nights! We had then no electric lights, but oil lamps flared and smoked; and now and then they would explode and blow the shanty ’cross the road, and sometimes victims croaked. The windows had no window screens, there were no books or magazines to make our morals lame; we used to sit ’round in the dark while father talked of Noah’s ark until our bedtime came. No furnace or steam heating plant would make the cold air gallivant; a fireplace kept us warm; the house was full of flying soot and burning brands, and smoke to boot, whene’er there was a storm. No telephones then made men curse; if with a neighbor you’d converse, you hoofed it fourteen miles; the girl who wished to be a belle believed that she was doing well if she knew last year’s styles. There’ll never be such days as those, when people wore no underclothes,and beds were stuffed with hay, when paper collars were the rage—oh, dear, delightful bygone age, when we were young and gay!
THE RAIN
THE clouds are banked up overhead, the thunder rips and roars; the lightning hits old Jimpson’s shed, and now the torrent pours. The crazy hens get wet and mad, the ducks rejoice and quack; the patient cow looks pretty sad, and humps her bony back; the hired man, driven from the field, for shelter swiftly hies; old Pluvius can surely wield the faucet when he tries. In half an hour the rain is done, the growling thunder stops, and once again the good old sun is warming up the crops. In half an hour more good is wrought to every human cause, than all our statesmen ever brought by passing helpful laws. Old Pluvius sends down the juice, when he’s blown off the foam, and once again high hangs the goose in every happy home. Not all the armies of the earth, nor fleets that sail the main, can bring us prizes which are worth a half-hour’s honest rain. No prophet with his tongue or pen, no poet with his lyre, can, like the rain, bring joy to men, or answer their desire. The sunflowers have new lease of life, the johnnie-jumpups jump. Now I must go and help my wife to prime the cistern pump.
SOMETHING TO DO
OH, ye who complain of the grind, remember these words (which are true!): The dreariest job one can find is looking for something to do! Sometimes, when my work seems a crime, and I’m sorely tempted to sob, I think of the long vanished time when I was out hunting a job. I walked eighty miles every day, and climbed forty thousand high stairs, and people would shoo me away, and pelt me with inkstands and chairs. And then, when the evening grew dark, I knew naught of comfort or ease; I made me a bed in the park, for supper chewed bark from the trees. I looked through the windows at men who tackled their oysters and squabs, and probably grumbled again because they were tired of their jobs. And I was out there in the rain, with nothing to eat but my shoe, and filled with a maddening pain because I had nothing to do. And now when I’m tempted to raise the grand hailing sign of distress, I think of those sorrowful days, and then I feel better, I guess. I go at my labors again with energy vital and new, and say, as I toil in my den, “Thank God, I have something to do!”
INDUSTRY
HOW doth the busy little bee improve each shining hour! It honey takes from every tree, and keeps it till it’s sour. Ah, nothing hinders, nothing queers its labors here below; it does not always cock its ears, to hear the whistle blow. Wherever honey is on tap, you see the bumbler climb; for shorter hours it doesn’t scrap, nor charge for overtime. It’s on the wing the livelong day, from rise to set of sun, and when at eve it hits the hay, no chore is left undone. And when the bumblers are possessed of honey by the pound, bad boys come up and swat their nest, and knock it to the ground. The store they gathered day by day has vanished in a breath, and so the bees exclaim, “Foul play!” and sting themselves to death. There is no sense in making work a gospel and a creed, in thinking every hour will spoil that knows no useful deed. No use competing with the sun, and making life a strain; for bees—and boys—must have some fun if they’d be safe and sane.
WET WEATHER
ALL spring the rain came down amain, and rills grew into rivers; the bullfrogs croaked that they were soaked till mildewed were their livers. The fish were drowned, and in a swound reclined the muskrat’s daughter, and e’en the snakes, in swamps and brakes, hissed forth “There’s too much water!” And all my greens, the peas and beans, that I with toil had planted, a sickly host, gave up the ghost, the while I raved and ranted. The dew of doom hit spuds in bloom, and slew the tender onion; I viewed the wreck, and said, “By heck!” and other things from Bunyan. All greens of worth drooped to the earth, and died and went to thunder; but useless weeds all went to seeds—no rain could keep them under. When weather’s dry, and in the sky a red-hot sun is burning, it gets the goats of corn and oats, the wheat to wastage turning; the carrots shrink, and on the blink you see the parsnips lying, but weeds still thrive and keep alive, while useful things are dying. It’s strange and sad that critters bad, both veg’table and human, hang on so tight, while critters bright must perish when they’re bloomin’!
AFTER STORM
THE wind has blown the clouds away, and now we have a perfect day, the sun is sawing wood; we jog along ’neath smiling skies, the sounds of grief no more arise, and every gent feels good. Life seems a most delightful graft when nature once again has laughed, dismissing clouds and gloom; we find new charms in Mother Earth, our faces beam with seemly mirth, our whiskers are in bloom. That is the use of dreary days, on which we’re all inclined to raise a yell of bitter grief; they fill us up with woe and dread, so when the gloomy clouds are sped, we’ll feel a big relief. That is the use of every care that fills your system with despair, and rends your heart in twain; for when you see your sorrow waltz, you’ll turn three hundred somersaults, and say life’s safe and sane. If there was not a sign of woe in all this verdant vale below, life soon would lose its zest, and you would straightway roar and beef because you couldn’t find a grief to cuddle to your breast. So sunshine follows after storm, and snow succeeds the weather warm, and we have fog and sleet; all sorts of days are sliding past, and when we size things up at last, we see life can’t be beat.
Transcriber’s Notes:Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.Typographical errors were silently corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.