THE TRAMP
HIS hair is long, his breath is strong, his hat is old and battered, his knees are sprung, his nerves unstrung, his clothes are badly tattered, his shoes are worn, his hide’s been torn by bow-wows fierce and snarling; and yet, by heck! this tough old wreck was once some daddy’s darling!
He still must hit the ties and grit. A dismal fate is his’n; for if he stops, the village cops will slam him into prison. Some hayseed judge would make him trudge out where the rock pile’s lying, to labor there, in his despair, till next year’s snows are flying. The women shy when he goes by; with righteous wrath they con him. Men give him kicks and hand him bricks and train their shotguns on him. His legs are sprained, his fetlocks strained, from climbing highways hilly; it’s hard to think this seedy gink was someone’s little Willie!
And yet ’tis so. Once, long ago, some dad of him was bragging, and matrons mild surveyed the child and set their tongues a-wagging. “What lovely eyes!” one woman cries. “They look like strips of heaven!” “Andnote his hairs!” a dame declares. “I’ve counted six or seven!” “His temper’s sweet,” they all repeat; “he makes no fuss or bother. He has a smile that’s free from guile—he looks just like his father!” Thus women talked as he was rocked to slumber in his cradle; they filled with praise his infant days, poured taffy with a ladle.
And ma and dad, with bosoms glad, planned futures for the creature. “I’ll have my way,” the wife would say; “the child must be a preacher! His tastes are pure, of that I’m sure,” she says, with optimism; “for when he strays around and plays, he grabs the catechism!”
“Ah, well,” says dad, “the lovely lad will reach great heights—I know it. I have the dope that he’ll beat Pope or Byron as a poet.”
To give him toys and bring him joys, the savings bank was burgled; folks cried, “Gee whiz! How cute he is!” whenever baby gurgled.
His feet are bare, his matted hair could not be combed with harrows; his garb is weird, and in his beard are bobolinks and sparrows. You’d never think, to see the gink, that ever he had parents! Can it be so that long ago he was somebody’s Clarence?
THE DOLOROUS WAY
AS a mortal man grows older he has pains in hoof or shoulder, by a thousand aches and wrenches all his weary frame is torn; he has headache and hay fever till he is a stout believer in the theory of the poet that the race was made to mourn. He has gout or rheumatism and he’s prone to pessimism, and he takes a thousand balsams, and the bottles strew the yard; he has grip and influenzy till his soul is in a frenzy, and he longs to end the journey, for this life is beastly hard. And his system’s revolution is Dame Nature’s retribution for the folly of his conduct in the days of long ago; in his anguish nearly fainting he is paying for the painting, for the wassail and the ruffling that his evenings used to know. We may dance and have our inning in our manhood’s bright beginning, but we all must pay the fiddler, pay him soon or pay him late, and a million men are paying for the dancing and the playing, who are charging up their troubles to misfortune or to fate.
LOOKING FORWARD
I OFTEN wonder how this globe will struggle on when I cash in, when I put on my long white robe and sleep with cold but peaceful grin. I find it hard to realize that sun and moon and stars will shine, that clouds will drift along the skies, when everlasting sleep is mine. What is the use of keeping up the long procession of the spheres, when I’m beneath the butter-cup, with gumbo in my eyes and ears? What is the use of dusk or dawn, of starless dark or glaring light, when I from all these scenes am gone, down to a million years of night? Young men will vow the same sweet vows, and maids with beating hearts will hear, beneath the churchyard maple’s boughs, and reck not that I’m resting near. And to the altar, up the aisle, the blooming brides of June will go, and bells will ring and damsels smile, and I’ll be too blamed dead to know. Ah, well, I’ve had my share of fun, I’ve lived and loved and shut the door; and when this little journey’s done, I’ll go to rest without a roar.
SEEING THE WORLD
HE jogged around from town to town, “to see the world,” was his excuse; he’d get a job and hold it down a little while, then turn it loose. “Oh, stay,” employers use to say; “your moving is a foolish trick; you’ll soon be earning bigger pay, for we’ll promote you pretty quick.” “This town is punk,” he would reply, “and every street is surnamed Queer; I’d see the world before I die—I do not wish to stagnate here.” Then he was young and quick and strong, and jobs were thick, as he jogged by, till people passed the word along that on him no one could rely. Then, when he landed in a town, and wished to earn a humble scad, the stern employers turned him down—“we want you not, your record’s bad.” He’s homeless in these wintry days, he has no bed, no place to sup; he “saw the world” in every phase; the world saw him—and passed him up. It’s good to “see the world,” no doubt, but one should make his bundle first, or age will find him down and out, panhandling for the wienerwurst.
THE POLITE MAN
WHEN Wigglewax is on the street, a charming smile adorns his face; to every dame he haps to meet, he bows with courtly, old world grace. His seat, when riding in a car, to any girl he’ll sweetly yield; and women praise him near and far, and say he is a Chesterfield. Throughout the town, from west to east, the man for chivalry is famed. “The Bayards are not all deceased,” the women say, when he is named. At home this Bayard isn’t thus; his eye is fierce, his face is sour; he looks around for things to cuss, and jaws the women by the hour. His daughters tremble at his frown, and wonder why he’s such a bear; his wife would like to jump the town, and hide herself most anywhere. But if a visitor drops in, his manner changes with a jerk, he wears his false and shallow grin, and bows like some jimtwisted Turk. Then for his daughters and his wife he wears his smile serene and fat, and callers say, “No sordid strife can enter such a home as that!” A million frauds like Wigglewax are smirking on the streets today, and when at eve they seek their shacks, they’ll beef and grouch, the old stale way.
UNCONQUERED
LET tribulation’s waters roll, and drench me as I don’t deserve! I am the captain of my soul, I am the colonel of my nerve. Don’t say my boasting’s out of place, don’t greet me with a jeer or scoff; I’ve met misfortune face to face, and pulled its blooming whiskers off. For I have sounded all the deeps of poverty and ill and woe, and that old smile I wear for keeps still pushed my features to and fro. Oh, I have walked the wintry streets all night because I had no bed; and I have hungered for the eats, and no one handed me the bread. And I have herded with the swine like that old prodigal of yore, and this elastic smile of mine upon my countenance I wore. For I believed and still believe that nothing ill is here to stay; the woozy woe, that makes us grieve, tomorrow will be blown away. My old-time griefs went up in smoke, and I remain a giggling bard; I look on trouble as a joke, and chortle when it hits me hard. It’s all your attitude of mind that makes you gay or sad, my boy, that makes your work a beastly grind, or makes it seem around of joy. The mind within me governs all, and brings me gladness or disgust; I am the captain of my gall, I am the major of my crust.
REGULAR HOURS
I HIT the hay at ten o’clock, and then I sleep around the block, till half past five; I hear the early robin’s voice, and see the sunrise, and rejoice that I’m alive. From pain and katzenjammer free, my breakfast tastes as good to me as any meal; I throw in luscious buckwheat cakes, and scrambled eggs and sirloin steaks, and breaded veal. And as downtown I gaily wend, I often overtake a friend who’s gone to waste; “I stayed up late last night,” he sighs, “and now I have two bloodshot eyes, and dark brown taste; I’d give a picayune to die, for I’m so full of grief that I can hardly walk; I’ll have to brace the drugstore clerks and throw some bromo to my works, or they will balk.” But yesterday I saw a man to whom had been attached the can by angry boss, he wassailed all the night away, and then showed up for work by day a total loss. Don’t turn the night time into day, or loaf along the Great White Way—that habit grows; if to the front you hope to keep, you must devote your nights to sleep—I tell you those.
PLANTING A TREE
TO be in line with worthy folk, you soon must plant an elm or oak, a beech or maple fair to see, a single or a double tree. When winter’s storms no longer roll, go, get a spade and dig a hole, and bring a sapling from the woods, and show your neighbors you’re the goods. What though with years you’re bowed and bent, and feel your life is nearly spent? The tree you plant will rear its limbs, and there the birds will sing their hymns, and in its cool and grateful shade the girls will sip their lemonade; and lovers there on moonlight nights will get Dan Cupid dead to rights; and fervid oaths and tender vows will go a-zipping through its boughs. And folks will say, with gentle sigh, “Long years ago an ancient guy, whose whiskers brushed against his knee, inserted in the ground this tree. ’Twas but a little sapling then; and he, the kindest of old men, was well aware that he’d be dead, long ere its branches grew and spread, but still he stuck it in the mould, and never did his feet grow cold. Oh, he was wise and kind and brave—let’s place a nosegay on his grave!”
DREAMERS AND WORKERS
THE dreamers sit and ponder on distant things and dim, across the skyline yonder, where unknown planets swim; they roam the starry reaches—at least, they think they do—with patches on their breeches and holes in either shoe. The workers still are steaming around at useful chores; they always save their dreaming for night, to mix with snores. They’re toiling on their places, they’re raising roastin’ ears, they are not keeping cases on far, uncharted spheres. They’re growing beans and carrots, and hay that can’t be beat, while dreamers in their garrets have not enough to eat. Oh, now and then a dreamer is most unduly smart, and shows he is a screamer in letters or in art; but where one is a winner, ten thousand dreamers weep because they lack a dinner, and have no place to sleep. There is a streak of yellow in dreamers, as a class; the worker is the fellow who makes things come to pass; he keeps the forges burning, the dinner pail he fills, he keeps the pulleys turning in forty thousand mills. The man with dreams a-plenty, who lives on musty prunes, beside him looks like twenty or eighteen picayunes.
SPRING SICKNESS
THIS is the season when the blood, according to the learned physician, is thick and flows as slow as mud, which puts a man in bad condition. Spring sickness is a fell disease, according to our time-worn notions, and, having it, the victim flees, to blow himself for dopes and potions. “I have to thin the sluggish stream,” he says, “which through my system passes; it’s thicker now than cheap ice cream, and flows like New Orleans molasses.” From all spring ills he’d have release, if he would tramp his potions under, and get a jar of Elbow Grease, the medicine that’s cheap as thunder. To get out doors where breezes blow, and tinker ’round to beat the dickens, would make a lot of ailments go, and thin the blood that winter thickens. Instead of taking pale pink pills which are designed for purple parties, go, plant the spuds in shallow hills, and you’ll be feeling fine, my hearties! We are too fond of taking dope, while in our easy chairs reclining, when we should shed our coats and slope out yonder where the sun is shining.
ON THE BRIDGE
I STOOD on the bridge at midnight, and looked at the sizzling town, where the pleasure seeking people were holding the sidewalks down. The moon rose over the city and shone on the dames and gents, but the glare of the lights electric made it look like twenty cents. The windows of homes were darkened, for no one was staying there; the children, as well, as grownups, were all in the Great White Glare. Deserted were all the firesides, abandoned the old-time game; alas, that the old home circle is naught but an empty name! The father is out chug-chugging, the mother is at her club, the kids see the moving pictures, and go to hotels for grub. How often, oh, how often, in the days that seemed good to me, have I looked at the children playing at home, where they ought to be! How often, oh, how often, in those days of the proper stamp, have I gazed on the parents reading, at home, by the evening lamp! But the world has gone to thunder, forgotten that elder day; and I took up the bridge and broke it, and threw all the chunks away.
MR. CHUCKLEHEAD
HE shuts the windows, and shuts the doors, and then he lies in his bed and snores, and breathes old air that is stale and flat—the kind of air that would kill a cat. He says next day: “I am feeling tough; I’ll have to visit old Dr. Guff, and buy a pint of his pale pink pills, or I shall harbor some fatal ills.”
He fills his system with steaks and pies, and never indulges in exercise. He eats and drinks of the market’s best, until the buttons fly off his vest; he’s grown so mighty of breadth and girth that when he gambols he shakes the earth. “I’ll see Doc Faker,” he says; “that’s flat; I’ll get his dope for reducing fat. Doc Faker says he can make me gaunt, and let me eat all the stuff I want.”
He sits and mopes in his study chair, while others toil in the open air. He quaffs iced drinks through the sultry day, electric fans on his person play. “I feel despondent,” he murmurs low; “I lack the vim that I used to know; my liver’s loose and my kidneys balk, and my knee joints creak when I try to walk. I’ll call Doc Clinkerand have him bring his Compound Juice of the Flowers of Spring.”
His head is bald where the tresses grew in the long gone days when his scalp was new. He won’t believe that the hair won’t grow where it lost its grip in the long ago. He tries all manner of dope and drug; he buys Hair Balm by the gallon jug; he reads the papers and almanacs for news concerning the Mystic Wax which surely maketh the wool appear on heads gone bare in the yesteryear.
The more he uses of patent dopes, the more he worries, the more he mopes. And all he needs to be blithe and gay is just to throw his old jugs away, to do some work, as his fathers toiled, to let in air that has not been spoiled, to rest his stomach and work his thews, quit pressing coat tails and shake his shoes. If Chucklehead and his tribe did this, they’d soon find health, which is short for bliss; and old Doc Faker and all his gang would close their offices and go hang.
IN THE SPRING
IN the spring the joyous husband hangs the carpet on the line, and assaults it with a horsewhip till its colors fairly shine; and the dust that rises from it fills the alley and the court, and he murmurs, ’twixt his sneezes: “This is surely splendid sport!”
In the spring the well-trained husband wrestles with the heating stove, while the flippant-minded neighbors go a-fishing in a drove. With the pipes and wire he tinkers, and his laughter fills the place, when the wholesome soot and ashes gather on his hands and face; and he says: “I’d like to labor at this task from sun to sun; this is what I call diversion—this is pure and perfect fun!”
In the spring the model husband carries furniture outdoors, and he gaily helps the women when they want to paint the floors; and he blithely eats his supper sitting on the cellar stairs, for he knows his wife has varnished all the tables and the chairs. Oh, he carries pails of water, and he carries beds and ticks, and he props up the veranda with a wagonload of bricks, and he deftly spades the garden, and he paints the barn and fence, and he rakes andburns the rubbish with an energy intense, saying ever as he labors, in the house or out of doors: “How I wish my wife and daughters could suggest some other chores!”
In the spring this sort of husband may be found—there’s one in Spain, there is one in South Dakota and another one in Maine.
BE JOYFUL
YOU’D better be joking than kicking or croaking, you’d better be saying that life is a joy, then folks will caress you and praise you and bless you, and say you’re a peach and a broth of a boy. You’d better be cheery, not drooling and dreary, from the time you get up till you go to your couch; or people will hate you and roast and berate you—they don’t like the man with a hangover grouch. You’d better be leaving the groaning and grieving to men who have woes of the genuine kind; you know that your troubles are fragile as bubbles, they are but the growth of a colicky mind. You’d better be grinning while you have your inning, or when a real trouble is racking your soul, your friends will be growling, “He always is howling—he wouldn’t touch joy with a twenty-foot pole.” You’d better be pleasant; if sorrow is present, there’s no use in chaining it fast to your door; far better to shoo it, and hoot and pursue it, and then it may go and come back never more.
GOOD AND EVIL
THE poet got his facts awry, concerning what lives after death; the good men do lives on for aye, the evil passes like a breath. A noble thought, by thinker thunk, will live and flourish through the years; a thought ignoble goes kerplunk, to perish in a pool of tears. Man dies, and folks around his bed behold his tranquil, outworn clay; “We’ll speak no evil of the dead, but recollect the good,” they say. Then one recalls some noble trait which figured in the ice-cold gent. “He fixed the Widow Johnsing’s gate, and wouldn’t charge a doggone cent.” “Oh, he was grand when folks were ill; he’d stay and nurse them night and day, hand them the bolus and the pill, and never hint around for pay.” “He ran three blocks to catch my wig when April weather was at large.” “He butchered Mrs. Jagway’s pig, and smoked the hams, and didn’t charge.” Thus men conspire, to place on file and make a record of the good, and they’d forget the mean or vile for which, perhaps, in life you stood. The shining heroes we admire had faults and vices just like you; when they concluded to expire, their failings kicked the bucket, too.
BROWN OCTOBER ALE
HOW many ringing songs there are that celebrate the wine, and other goods behind the bar, as being wondrous fine! How many choruses exalt the brown October ale, which puts a fellow’s wits at fault, and lands him in the jail! A hundred poets wasted ink, and ruined good quill pens, describing all the joys of drink in gilded boozing kens. But all those joys are hollow fakes which wisdom can’t indorse; they’re soon converted into aches and sorrow and remorse. The man who drains the brimming glass in haunts of light and song, next morning knows that he’s an ass, with ears twelve inches long. An aching head, a pile of debts, a taste that’s green and stale, that’s what the merry fellow gets from brown October ale. Untimely graves and weeping wives and orphans shedding brine; this sort of thing the world derives from bright and sparkling wine. The prison cell, the scaffold near; such features may be blamed on wholesome keg and bottled beer, which made one city famed. Oh, sing of mud or axle grease, but chant no fairy tale, of that disturber of the peace, the brown October ale!
DELIVER US
FROM all the woe and sorrow that bloody warfare brings, when monarchs start to borrow some grief from other kings, from dreadful scenes of slaughter, and dead men by the cord, from blood that flows like water, deliver us, O Lord! From fear and melancholy that every death list gives, from all the pompous folly in which an army lives, from all the strife stupendous, that brings no sane reward, but only loss tremendous, deliver us, O Lord! From seeing friend and neighbor in tools of death arrayed, deserting useful labor to wield the thirsty blade; from seeing plowshares lying all rusty on the sward, where men and boys are dying, deliver us, O Lord! From seeing foreign legions invade our peaceful shore, and turn these smiling regions to scenes of death and gore, from all the desolation the gods of war accord to every fighting nation, deliver us, O Lord!
DOING ONE’S BEST
ONE sweetly solemn thought comes to me every night; I at my task have wrought, and tried to do it right. No doubt my work is punk, my efforts are a jest; however poor my junk, it represents my best. If you, at close of day, when sounds the quitting bell, that truthfully can say, you’re doing pretty well. Some beat you galley west, and bear away the prize, but you have done your best—in that the honor lies. And, having done your best, your conscience doesn’t hurt; serene you go to rest, in your long muslin shirt. And at the close of life, when you have said good-bye to cousin, aunt and wife, and all the children nigh, you’ll face the river cold that flows to islands blest, with courage high and bold, if you have done your best. No craven fears you’ll know, no terrors fierce and sharp, but like a prince you’ll go, to draw your crown and harp. So, then, whate’er the field in which you do your stunt, whatever tool you wield to earn your share of blunt, toil on with eager zest, nor falter in that plan; the one who does his best is God’s blue-ribbon man.
A LITTLE WHILE
A FEW more years, or a few more days, and we’ll all be gone from the rugged ways wherein we are jogging now; a few more seasons of stress and toil, then we’ll all turn in to enrich the soil, for some future farmer’s plow. A few more years and the grass will grow where you and the push are lying low, your arduous labors o’er; and those surviving will toil and strain, their bosoms full of the same old pain you knew in the days of yore. Oh, what’s the use of the carking care, or the load of grief that we always bear, in such a brief life as this? A few more years and we will not know a side of beef from a woozy woe, an ache from a bridal kiss. “I fear the future,” you trembling say, and nurse your fear in a dotard way, and moisten it with a tear; the future day is a day unborn, and you’ll be dead on its natal morn, so live while the present’s here. A few more years and you cannot tell a quart of tears from a wedding bell, a wreath from a beggar’s rags; you’ll take a ride to the place of tombs in a jaunty hearse with its nodding plumes, and a pair of milk-black nags. So while you stay onthe old gray earth, cut up and dance with exceeding mirth, have nothing to do with woe; a few more years and you cannot weep, you’ll be so quiet and sound asleep, where the johnnie-jumpups grow.
THE IDLERS
MEN labor against the hames, and sweat till they’re old and gray, supporting the stall-fed dames who idle their years away. We’ve bred up a futile race of women who have no care, except for enameled face, or a sea-green shade of hair, who always are richly gowned and wearing imported lids, who carry their poodles ’round, preferring the pups to kids. And husbands exhaust their frames, and strain till their journey’s done, supporting the stall-fed dames, who never have toiled or spun. We’re placed in this world to work, to harvest our crop of prunes; Jehovah abhors the shirk, in gown or in trouserloons. The loafers in gems and silk are bad as the fragrant vags, who pilfer and beg and bilk, and die in their rancid rags. The loafers at bridge-whist games, the loafers at purple teas, the hand-painted stall-fed dames, are chains on the workers’ knees. The women who cook and sew, the women who manage homes, who have no desire to grow green hair on enameled domes, how noble and good they seem, how wholesome and sane their aim, compared with that human scream, the brass-mounted, stall-fed dame!
LITERATURE
I LIKE a rattling story of whiskered buccaneers, whose ships are black and gory, who cut off people’s ears. A yarn of Henry Morgan warms up my jaded heart, and makes that ancient organ feel young and brave and smart. I like detective fiction, it always hits the spot, however poor in diction, however punk in plot; I like the sleuth who follows a clue o’er hill and vale, until the victim swallows his medicine in jail. I like all stories ripping, in which some folks are killed, in which the guns go zipping, and everyone is thrilled. But when I have some callers, I hide those books away, those good old soul enthrallers which make my evenings gay. I blush for them, by jingo, and all their harmless games; I talk the highbrow lingo, and swear by Henry James. When sitting in my shanty, to “have my picture took,” I hold a work by Dante, or other heavy book. But when the artist’s vanished, I drop those dippy pomes, old Dante’s stuff is banished—I reach for Sherlock Holmes.
NURSING GRIEF
I KNOW not what may be your woe, how deep the grief you nurse, but if you bid the blamed thing go, it’s likely to disperse. If you would say, “Cheap grief, depart!” you soon might dance and sing; instead, you fold it to your heart, or lead it with a string. Oh, every time I go outdoors, I meet some mournful men, who talk about their boils or sores, of felon or of wen. Why put your misery in words, and thus your woe prolong? ’Twere best to talk about the birds, which sing their ragtime song; or of the cheerful clucking hens, which guard their nests of eggs; that beats a tale of corns or wens, of mumps or spavined legs. We go a-groaning of our aches, of damaged feet or backs, and nearly all our pains are fakes, when we come down to tacks. We talk about financial ills when we have coin to burn—and if we wish for dollar bills, there’s lots of them to earn. We cherish every little grief, when we should blithely smile; and if a woe’s by nature brief, we string it out a mile. Oh, let us cease to magnify each trifling ill and pain, and wear a sunbeam in each eye, and show we’re safe and sane.
THE IDLE RICH
I’M fond of coin, but I don’t itch to be among the idle rich, who have long green to burn; their wealth I could not well employ, for I could never much enjoy the bone I did not earn. Oh, every coin of mine is wet with honest, rich, transparent sweat, until it has been dried; it represents no sire’s bequest, no buried miser’s treasure chest, no “multi’s” pomp and pride. I grind my anthem mill at home, and every time I make a pome, I take in fifty cents; I get more pleasure blowing in this hard-earned, sweat-stained slice of tin, than do the wealthy gents. Their coin comes easy as the rain, it represents no stress or strain, no toil in shop or den; they use their wealth to buy and sell, like taking water from a well; the hole fills up again. We do not value much the thing, which, like an everlasting spring, wells up, year after year; if you’d appreciate a bone, you have to earn it with a groan, and soak it with a tear. I’d rather have the rusty dime for which I labored overtime, and sprained a wing or slat, than have the large and shining buck that Fortune handed me, or Luck; get wise, rich lad, to that.
PASSING THE HAT
PASSING the hat, passing the hat! Some one forever gets busy at that! Oh, it seems useless to struggle and strain, all our endeavor is hopeless and vain; when we have gathered a small, slender roll, hoping to lay in some cordwood or coal, hoping to purchase some flour and some spuds, hoping to pay for the ready made duds, hoping to purchase a bone for the cat, some one comes cheerfully passing the hat! Passing the hat that the bums may be warm, passing the hat for some noble reform, passing the hat for the fellows who fail, passing the hat to remodel the jail, passing the bonnet for this or for that, some one forever is passing the hat! Dig up your bundle and hand out your roll, if you don’t do it you’re lacking a soul! What if the feet of your children are bare? What if your wife has no corset to wear? What if your granny is weeping for shoes? What if the grocer’s demanding his dues? Some one will laugh at such logic as that, some one who’s merrily passing the hat! Passing the hat for the pink lemonade, passing the hat for a moral crusade, passing the hat to extinguish the rat—some one forever is passing the hat!
GOING TO SCHOOL
“I HATE to tool my feet to school,” we hear the boy confessin’; “I’d like to play the livelong day, and dodge the useful lesson. The rule of three gives pain to me, old Euclid makes me weary, the verbs of Greece disturb my peace, geography is dreary. I’ll go and fish; I do not wish to spend my lifetime schooling; I do not care to languish there, and hear the teacher drooling.” His books he hates, his maps and slates, and all the schoolhouse litter; he feels oppressed and longs for rest, his sorrows make him bitter. The years scoot on and soon are gone, for years are restless friskers; the schoolboy small is now grown tall, and has twelve kinds of whiskers. “Alas,” he sighs, “had I been wise, when I was young and sassy, I well might hold, now that I’m old, a situation classy. But all the day I thought of play, and fooled away my chances, and here I strain, with grief and pain, in rotten circumstances. I’m always strapped; I’m handicapped by lack of useful knowledge; through briny tears I view the years I loafed in school and college!”
NOT WORTH WHILE
THE night of death will soon descend; a few short years and then the end, and perfect rest is ours; forgotten by the busy throng, we’ll sleep, while seasons roll along, beneath the grass and flowers. Our sojourn in this world is brief, so why go hunting care and grief, why have a troubled mind? And what’s the use of getting mad, and making folks around us sad, by saying words unkind? Why not abjure the base and mean, why not be sunny and serene, from spite and envy free? Why not be happy while we may, and make our little earthly stay a joyous jamboree? We’re here for such a little while! And then we go and leave the pile for which we strive and strain; worn out and broken by the grind, we go, and leave our wads behind—such effort’s all in vain. We break our hearts and twist our souls acquiring large and useless rolls of coins and kindred things, and when we reach St. Peter’s Town, they will not buy a sheet-iron crown, or cast-off pair of wings.
MISREPRESENTATION
I BOUGHT a pound of yellow cheese, the other day, from Grocer Wheeze. And as he wrapped it up he cried, “In this fine cheese I take much pride. It’s made from Jersey cream and milk, and you will find it fine as silk; it’s absolutely pure and clean, contains no dyes or gasoline, it’s rich and sweet, without a taint, doggone my buttons if it ain’t. Oh, it will chase away your woe, and make your hair and whiskers grow.” I took it home with eager feet, impatient to sit down and eat, for I am fond of high-class cheese, which with my inner works agrees. But that blamed stuff was rank and strong, for it had been on earth too long. My wife, a good and patient soul, remarked, “Bring me a ten-foot pole, before you do your other chores, and I will take that cheese out doors. Before it’s fit for human grub we’ll have to stun it with a club.” What does a sawed-off grocer gain by such a trick, unsafe, insane? And what does any merchant make by boosting some atrocious fake? Yet every day we’re buying junk which proves inferior and punk, although it’s praised to beat the band; such things are hard to understand.
MAN OF GRIEF
I NOW am bent and old and gray, and I have come a doleful way. A son of sorrow I have been, since first I reached this world of sin. Year after year, and then repeat, all kinds of troubles dogged my feet; they nagged me when I wished to sleep and made me walk the floor and weep. I had all troubles man can find—and most of them were in my mind. When I would number all the cares which gave me worry and gray hairs, I can’t remember one so bad that it should bother any lad. And often, looking back, I say, “I wonder why I wasn’t gay, when I had youth and strength and health, and all I lacked on earth was wealth? I wonder why I didn’t yip with gladness ere I lost my grip? My whole life long I’ve wailed and whined of cares which lived but in my mind. The griefs that kept me going wrong were things that never came along. The cares that furrowed cheek and brow look much like hop-joint phantoms now. And now that it’s too late, almost, I see that trouble is a ghost, a scarecrow on a crooked stick, to scare the gents whose hearts are sick.”
MELANCHOLY DAYS
THE melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, when you, determined to be glum, produce the flowing tear, when you refuse to see the joys surrounding every gent, and thus discourage other boys, and stir up discontent. A grouch will travel far and long before its work is done; and it will queer the hopeful song, and spoil all kinds of fun. Men start downtown with buoyant tread, and things seem on the boom; then you come forth with blistered head, and fill them up with gloom. There’d be no melancholy days, our lives would all be fair, if it were not for sorehead jays who always preach despair. We’d shake off every kind of grief if Jonah didn’t come, the pessimist who holds a brief for all things on the bum. So, if you really cannot rise above the sob and wail, and see the azure in the skies, and hear the nightingale, let some dark cave be your abode, where men can’t hear your howl, and let your comrades be the toad, the raven, and the owl.
MIGHT BE WORSE
THE window sash came hurtling down on Kickshaw’s shapely head and neck; it nearly spoiled his toilworn crown, and made his ears a hopeless wreck. Then Kickshaw sat and nursed his head, a man reduced to grievous pass; yet, with a cheerful smile, he said, “I’m glad it didn’t break the glass.” He might have ripped around and swore, till people heard him round a block, or kicked a panel from the door, or thrown the tomcat through the clock; he might have dealt in language weird, and made the housewife’s blood run cold, he might have raved and torn his beard, and wept as Rachel wept of old. But Kickshaw’s made of better stuff, no tears he sheds, no teeth he grinds; when dire misfortune makes a bluff, he looks for comfort, which he finds. And so he bears his throbbing ache, and puts a poultice on his brain, and says, “I’m glad it didn’t break that rich, imported window pane.” It never helps a man to beef, when trouble comes and knocks him lame; there’s solace back of every grief, if he will recognize the same.
MODERATELY GOOD
A LOAD of virtue will never hurt you, if modestly it’s borne; the saintly relic who’s too angelic for week days, makes us mourn. The gloomy mortal who by a chortle or joke is deeply vexed, the turgid person who’s still disbursin’ the precept and the text, is dull and dreary, he makes us weary, we hate to see him come; oh, gent so pious, please don’t come nigh us—your creed is too blamed glum! The saint who mumbles, when some one stumbles, “That man’s forever lost,” is but a fellow with streak of yellow, his words are all a frost. Not what we’re saying, as we go straying adown this tinhorn globe, not words or phrases, though loud as blazes, will gain us harp and robe. It’s what we’re doing while we’re pursuing our course with other skates, that will be counted when we have mounted the ladder to the Gates. A drink of water to tramps who totter with weakness in the sun will help us better than text and letter of sermons by the ton. So let each action give satisfaction, let words be few and wise, and, after dying, we’ll all go flying and whooping through the skies.
THE GIRL GRADUATE
IN school, academy and college stands forth the modern cultured girl, her lovely head so stuffed with knowledge it fairly makes her tresses curl. We all lean back in admiration when she stands up to make her speech, the finest product of the nation, the one serene, unblemished peach. Behold her in her snowy garments, the pride, the honor of her class! A malediction on the varmints who say her learning cuts no grass! “She hasn’t learned to fry the mutton, she’s not equipped to be a wife; she couldn’t fasten on a button, to save her sweet angelic life! With all her mighty fund of learning, she’s ignorant of useful chores; she cannot keep an oil stove burning so it won’t smoke us out of doors. The man she weds will know disaster, his dreams of home and love will spoil; she cannot make a mustard plaster, or put a poultice on a boil.” Avaunt, ye croakers, skip and caper, or we’ll upset your apple-carts! The damsel rises with her paper on “Old Greek Gods and Modern Arts.” So pledge her in a grapejuice flagon! Who cares if she can sew or bake? She’s pretty as a new red wagon, and sweeter than an old plum cake.
THE BYSTANDER
I STAND by my window alone, and look at the people go by, pursuing the shimmering bone, which is so elusive and shy. Pursuing the beckoning plunk, and no one can make them believe that rubles and kopecks are junk, vain baubles got up to deceive. Their faces are haggard and sad, from weariness often they reel, pursuing the succulent scad, pursuing the wandering wheel. And many are there in the throng who have all the money they need, and still they go racking along, inspired by the demon of greed. “To put some more bucks in the chest,” they sigh, as they toil, “would be grand;” the beauty and blessing of rest is something they don’t understand. We struggle and strain all our years, and wear out our bodies and brains, and when we are stretched on our biers, what profit we then by our pains? The lawyers come down with a whoop, and rake in our bundle of scrip, and plaster a lien on the coop before our poor orphans can yip. I stand at my window again, and see the poor folks as they trail, pursuing the yammering yen, pursuing the conquering kale; and sorrow is filling mybreast, regret that the people won’t know the infinite blessing of rest, that solace for heartache and woe.
MEDICINE HAT
THE tempests that rattle and kill off the cattle and freeze up the combs of the roosters and hens, that worry the granger, whose stock is in danger—the mules in their stables, the pigs in their pens—the loud winds that frolic like sprites with the colic and carry despair to the workingman’s flat, the wild raging blizzard that chills a man’s gizzard, they all come a-whooping from Medicine Hat. When men get together and note that the weather is fixing for ructions, preparing a storm, they cry: “Julius Caesar! The square-headed geezer who’s running the climate should try to reform! The winter’s extensive and coal’s so expensive that none can keep warm but the blamed plutocrat! It’s time that the public should some weather dub lick! It’s time for a lynching at Medicine Hat!” And when the sun’s shining we still are repining. “This weather,” we murmur, “is too good to last; just when we’re haw-hawing because we are thawing there’ll come from the Arctic a stemwinding blast; just when we are dancing and singing and prancing, there’ll comedown a wind that would freeze a stone cat; just when we are hoping that winter’s eloping, they’ll send us a package from Medicine Hat!”