Part 2
HE’S idle, unsteady, and everyone’s ready to throw him a dornick or give him a biff; he’s always in tatters, but little it matters; he’s evermore happy, so what is the diff? He carries no sorrow, no care for tomorrow, his roof is the heavens, his couch is the soil; no sighing or weeping breaks in on his sleeping, no bell in the morning shall call him to toil. As free as the breezes he goes where he pleases, no rude overseer to boss him around; his joys do not wither, he goes yon and hither, till dead in a haystack or ditch he is found. The joys of such freedom—no sane man can need ’em! Far better to toil for the kids and the wife, till muscles are aching and collarbone breaking, than selfishly follow the vagabond life. One laborer toiling is worth the whole boiling of idlers and tramps of whatever degree; and though we all know it we don’t find a poet embalming the fact as embalmed it should be. The poets will chortle about the blithe mortal who wanders the highways and sleeps in the hay, but who sings the toiler, the sweat-spangled moiler, who raises ten kids on a dollar a day?
THE COMING DAY
THERE’LL come a day when we must make full payment for all the foolish things we do today; and sackcloth then perchance will be our raiment, and we’ll regret the hours we threw away. We loaf today, and we shall loaf tomorrow, hard by the pump or in the corner store; there’ll come a day when we’ll look back with sorrow on wasted hours, the hours that come no more. We say harsh things to friends who look for kindness, and bring the tears to loving, patient eyes; we scold and quarrel in our fretful blindness, instead of smiles, we call up mournful sighs. Our friends will tread the path that leads us only to rest and silence in the grass-grown grave; there’ll come a day when weary, sad and lonely, we’ll think of them and of the wounds we gave. In marts of trade we’re prone to overreaching, to swell our roll we cheat and deal in lies, forgetful oft of early moral teaching, and all the counsel of the good and wise. It is, alas, an evil road we travel, that leads at last to bitterness and woe; there’ll come a day when gold will seem as gravel, and we shall mourn the sins of long ago.
SALTING THEM DOWN
THERE’S trouble in store for the gent who never salts down a red cent, who looks upon cash as the veriest trash, for foolish extravagance meant. Since money comes easy today, he thinks ’twill be always that way, and he burns up the scads with the rollicking lads and warbles a madrigal gay. His dollars are drawn when they’re due; and rather than salt down a few, he throws them, with jests, at the robin red breasts, with riotous hullabaloo. I look down the scurrying years—for I’m the descendant of seers—and the spendthrift descry when his youth is gone by, an object of pity and tears. I see him parading the street, on weary and ring-boney feet, a-begging for dimes, for the sake of old times, to buy him some sauerkraut to eat. I see him abandoned and sick, his pillow a dornick or brick; and the peeler comes by with a vulcanized eye and swats him for luck with a stick. I see him when dying; he groans, but his anguish for nothing atones! And they cart him away in the dawn cold and gray, to the place where they bury cheap bones. Don’t burn up your money, my friend; don’t squander or foolishly lend; though you say it is dross and regret not its loss, it’s a comfort and staff in the end.
SUCCESS IN LIFE
IT’S easy to be a success, as thousands of winners confess; no man’s so obscure or unlucky or poor that he can’t be a winner, I guess. And success, Mr. Man, doesn’t mean a roll that would stagger a queen, or some gems of your own, or a palace of stone, or a wagon that burns gasoline. A man’s a success, though renown doesn’t place on his forehead a crown, if he pays as he goes, if it’s true that he owes not a red in the dod-gasted town. A man’s a success if his wife finds comfort and pleasure in life; if she’s glad and content that she married a gent reluctant to organize strife. A man’s a success if his kids are joyous as Katy H. Dids; if they’re handsome and neat, with good shoes on their feet, and roses and things on their lids. A man’s a success if he tries to be honest and kindly and wise; if he’s slow to repeat all the lies he may meet, if he swats both the scandals and flies. I know when old Gaffer Pete Gray one morning was taken away, by Death, lantern-jowled, the whole village howled, and mourned him for many a day. Yet he was so poor that he had but seldom the half of a scad; he tried to do good in such ways as he could—he was a successful old lad!
TRUE HAPPINESS
WHEN torrents are pouring or tempests are roaring how pleasant and cheerful is home! To sit by the winder all drier than tinder and watch the unfortunates roam! With glad eyes to follow the fellows who wallow around in the rain or the sleet, to watch them a-slipping and sliding and tripping, and falling all over the street! There’s nothing so soothing, so apt to be smoothing the furrows of grief from your brow, as sitting and gazing at folks who are raising out there in the mud such a row! To watch a mad neighbor through hurricane labor, while you are all snug by the fire, to see him cavorting and pawing and snorting—what more could a mortal desire? I love storm and blizzard from A clear to Izzard, I’m fond of the sleet and the rain; let winter get busy and whoop till he’s dizzy, and I’ll be the last to complain. For there is a casement just over the basement where I in all comfort may sit, and watch people wading through mud or parading through snow till they fall in a fit.
GENEROSITY
OLD Kink’s always willing to preach, and hand out wise counsel and teach; but ask him for aid when you’re hungry and frayed, and he’ll stick to his wad like a leech. He’s handy with proverb and text to comfort the needy and vexed; but when there’s a plan to feed indigent man, old Kink never seems to get next. He’ll help out the widow with psalms, and pray for her fatherless lambs; but he never would try to bring joy to her eye with codfish and sauerkraut and hams. On Sunday he joins in the hymn, and makes the responses with vim; when they pass round the box for the worshipers’ rocks, his gift is exceedingly slim. He thinks he is fooling the Lord and is sure of a princely reward when to heaven he goes at this life’s journey’s close—with which view I am not in accord. For the Lord, he is wise to gold bricks, and the humbug who crosses the Styx will have to be sharp if he captures a harp; St. Peter will say to him, “Nix!” They size up a man nearly right when he comes to the portals of light; and no stingy old fraud ever hornswoggled God or put on a robe snowy white.
BACKBONE
FROM Yuba Dam to Yonkers the man of backbone conquers, where spineless critters fail; all obstacles o’ercoming, he goes along a-humming, and gathers fame and kale. No ghosts of failure haunt him, no grisly bogies daunt him or make his spirits low; you’ll find him scratching gravel wherever you may travel, from Butte to Broken Bow. From Winnipeg to Wooster you’ll see this cheerful rooster, this model to all men; undaunted by reverses he wastes no time in curses, but digs right in again. His face is always shining though others be repining; you cannot keep him down; his trail is always smoking while cheaper men are croaking about the old dead town. From Humboldt to Hoboken he leaves his sign and token in buildings high and grand; in factories that flourish, in industries that nourish a tired, anaemic land. He brings the work to toilers and fills with bread and broilers their trusty dinner pails; he keeps the ripsaw ripping, the big triphammer tripping, the workman driving nails. All honor to his noblets! We drink to him in goblets of grapejuice rich and red—the man of spine and gizzard who hustles like a blizzard and simply won’t be dead!
THE POORHOUSE
THE poorhouse, naked, grim, and bare, stands in a valley low; and most of us are headed there as fast as we can go. The paupers sit behind the gate, a solemn thing to see, and there all patiently they wait, they wait for you and me. We come, we come, O sad-eyed wrecks, we’re coming with a will! We’re all in debt up to our necks, and going deeper still! We’re buying things we can’t afford, and mock the old-time way of salting down a little hoard against the rainy day! No more afoot the poor man roams; in gorgeous car he scoots; we’ve mortgages upon our homes, our furniture, our boots. We’ve banished all the ancient cares, we paint the country red, we live like drunken millionaires, and never look ahead. The paupers, on the poorhouse lawn, are waiting in a group; they know we’ll all be there anon, to share their cabbage soup; they see us in our costly garb, and say: “Their course is brief; we see the harbingers that harb of bankruptcy and grief.” Be patient, paupers, for a span, ye friendless men and dames! We’re coming, blithely as we can, to join you in your games!
NIGHT IS COMING
WHILE the blessed daylight lingers, let us work with might and main, with our busy feet and fingers, also with the busy brain; let the setting sun behold us tired, but filled with honest pride; for the night will soon enfold us, when we lay our tools aside. When we’re in the churchyard lonely, where the weeping willows lean, there’s one thing and one thing only that will keep our memory green. If we did the tasks appointed as we lived our speeding years, then our graves will be anointed with a mourning legion’s tears. All our good intentions perish when is closed the coffin lid, and the world will only cherish and remember what we did. Nothing granite, monumental, can preserve your little fame; epitaphs are incidental, and will not embalm your name. Nothing counts when you are sleeping, but the goodly work you’ve done; that will last till gods are weeping round the ruins of the sun. Let no obstacles confound us, let us work till day is o’er; soon the night will gather round us, when we’ll sleep to work no more.
DOING THINGS RIGHT
TO do things right, with all your might—that is a goodly motto; I’ve pasted that inside my hat, and if you don’t you’d ought to. To do things right, as leads your light, with faith and hope abiding; to do your best and let the rest to Jericho go sliding! With such an aim you’ll win the game and see your fortune founded; and goodly deed beats any creed that ever man expounded. To do things right, to bravely fight, when fate cuts up unfairly, to pay your way from day to day, and treat your neighbor squarely! That doctrine fills all wants and stills the doubter’s qualms and terrors, and guides him straight at goodly gait through all the field of errors. To do your best, within your breast a cheerful heart undaunted—that is the plan that brings a man all things he ever wanted. At finding snares and nests of mares I am not very handy; but when it comes to finding plums folks say I am a dandy; and my receipt is short and sweet, an easy one to follow; just do things right, with all your might—it beats all others hollow!
RIGHT SIDE UP
THOUGH now and then our feet descend to byways of despair, we nearly always in the end land right side up with care. I’ve seen a thousand frenzied guys declare that all was lost, there was no hope beneath the skies, this life was but a frost. And then next year I’d see them scoot around in motor cars, each one a-holding in his snoot the richest of cigars. I’ve seen men at the wailing place declare they were undone; no more the cold world could they face, their course, they said, was run. Again I’d see them prance along, all burbling with delight; whatever in their lives was wrong, became at last all right. And so it’s foolishness, my friend, to weep or tear your hair; we nearly always, in the end, land right side up with care. Some call it luck, some providence, and some declare it fate; but there’s a kind, o’erruling sense that makes our tangles straight; and there are watchful eyes that mark our movements as we roam; a hand extended in the dark to guide us safely home. In what direction do you wend? You’ll find the helper there; we nearly always, in the end, land right side up with care.
THE IRON MEN
WHEN the north wind roars at your cottage doors and batters the window panes, and the cold’s so fierce that it seems to pierce right into your bones and veins, then it’s sweet to sit by the fire and knit, and think, while the needles clank, of the iron men, of the shining yen, you have in the village bank! When you’ve lost your job and misfortunes rob your face of its wonted grin, when the money goes for your grub and clothes, though there’s nothing coming in; when the fates are rough and they kick and cuff and give you a frequent spank, how sweet to think of the bunch of chink you have in the village bank! When you’re gray and old and your feet are cold, and the night is drawing on; when you’re tired and weak and your joints all creak, and the strength of youth is gone; when you watch and wait at the sunset gate for the boatman grim and lank, oh, it’s nice to know there’s a roll of dough all safe in the village bank! The worst, my friend, that the fates can send, is softened for you and yours if you have the price, have the coin on ice—the best of all earthly cures; oh, a healthy wad is your staff and rod when the luck seems tough and rank; your consolers then are the iron men you have in the village bank!
PROCRASTINATION
YOU are merely storing sorrow for the future, sages say, if you put off till tomorrow things which should be done today. When there is a job unpleasant that it’s up to me to do, I attack it in the present, give a whoop and push it through; then my mind is free from troubles, and I sit before the fire popping corn or blowing bubbles, or a-whanging at my lyre. If I said: “There is no hurry—that old job will do next week,” there would be a constant worry making my old brain-pan creak. For a man knows no enjoyment resting at the close of day, if he knows that some employment is neglected in that way. There is nothing more consoling at the setting of the sun, when the evening bells are tolling, than the sense of duty done. And that solace cometh never to the man of backbone weak who postpones all sane endeavor till the middle of next week. Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, as the poet said, when shooing agents from his garden gate. Let us shake ourselves and borrow wisdom from the poet’s lay; leaving nothing for tomorrow, doing all our chores today!
TIMBERTOES
OLD GOMER, of a Kansas town, was never known to wear a frown, or for man’s pity beg, although he stumps along his way, and does his work from day to day, upon a wooden leg. And every time he goes out doors he meets some peevish guy who roars about his evil luck; some fretful gent with leg of flesh who, when vicissitudes enmesh, proceeds to run amuck. Strong men with legs of flesh and bone just stand around the streets and groan, while Gomer pegs along and puts up hay the long hours through, and sounds his joyous whoopsydo, and makes his life a song. Old Gomer never sits and broods or seeks the hermit’s solitudes to fill the air with sighs; there’s no despondency in him! He brags about that basswood limb as though it were a prize. Sometimes I’m full of woe and grief, convinced the world brings no relief until a man is dead; and as I wail that things are wrong I see old Gomer hop along and then I soak my head. I’ve noticed that the men who growl, the ones who storm around and howl o’er fate’s unwise decrees, are mostly Fortune’s special pets; and then the man who never frets is one with red elm knees.
THE THANKLESS JOB
THERE’S nothing but tears for the man who steers our ship o’er the troubled sea; there’s nothing but grief for the nation’s chief, whoever that chief may be. Whatever he does, he can hear the buzz of critics as thick as flies; and all of his aims are sins and shames, and nothing he does is wise. There’s nothing but kicks for the man who sticks four years to the White House chair; and his stout heart aches and his wishbone breaks and he loses most of his hair. There’s nothing but growls and the knockers’ howls, and the spiteful slings and slams; and the vile cartoons and the dish of prunes and a chorus of tinkers’ dams. Oh, we humble skates in our low estates, who fuss with our garden sass, should view the woes of the men who rose above and beyond the mass, and be glad today that we go our way mid quiet and peaceful scenes; should thankfully take the hoe and rake, and wrestle with spuds and greens!
THE UNDERTAKER
WHEN life is done—this life that galls and frets us, this life so full of tears and doubts and dreads—the undertaker comes along and gets us, and tucks us neatly in our little beds. When we are done with toiling, hoarding, giving, when we are done with drawing checks and breath, he comes to show us that the cost of living cuts little ice beside the cost of death. I meet him daily in the street or alley, a cheerful man, he dances and he sings; and we exchange the buoyant jest and sally, and ne’er discourse of grim, unpleasant things. We talk of crops, the campaign and the weather, the I. and R., the trusts—this nation’s curse; no graveyard hints while we converse together, no reference to joyrides in a hearse. And yet I feel—perchance it is a blunder—that as I stand there, rugged, hale and strong, he’d like to ask me: “Comrade, why in thunder and other things, do you hang on so long?” When I complain of how the asthma tightens upon my lungs, and makes me feel a wreck, it seems to me his face with rapture lightens, smiles stretch his lips and wind around his neck. And when I say I’m feeling like a heifer turned out to grass, or like a hummingbird, he heaves a sigh as gentle as a zephyr, yet fraught with pain and grief and hope deferred.
GARDEN OF DREAMS
IN the garden of dreams let me rest, far, far from the laboring throng, from the moans of the tired and distressed, from the strains of the conqueror’s song. As a native of Bagdad, or Turk, I’d live in Arabian nights, away from the regions of work, from troubles and hollow delights. In the garden of dreams I would stray, and bother my fat head no more, a-wondering how I shall pay for groceries bought at the store. Ah, there in that garden I’d sit, communing in peace with my soul, and never again have a fit when handed the bill for the coal. In the garden of dreams I’d recline and soar on the wings of romance, forgetting this old hat of mine, the patches all over my pants, the clamor of children for shoes, the hausfrau’s demands for a gown, the lodge’s exorbitant dues, the polltax to work in the town. Alas! It is as I supposed—there is no escaping my fate, for the garden of dreams has been closed, a padlock is fixed on the gate. The young, who are buoyant and glad, may enter that garden, it seems; but the old, who are weary and sad, are warned from the garden of dreams!
CLOUDS
IF every day was sunny, with ne’er a cloud in view, we’d soon be spending money to buy a cloud or two. It always makes me weary when people say: “Old boy, may all your days be cheery and bright and full of joy!” If all my days were sunny, existence would seem flat; if I were fed on honey I’d soon get sick of that. I like a slice of sorrow to hold me down today, for that will make tomorrow seem fifty times as gay. A little dose of sickness won’t make me whine or yell; ’twill emphasize the slickness of life when I am well. A little siege of trouble won’t put my hopes in pawn, for I’ll be trotting double with joy when it is gone. Down there in tropic regions where sunshine gleams all day, the fat and lazy legions just sleep their lives away; there every idle bumpkin who in the sunshine lies, lives like a yellow pumpkin, and like a squash he dies. I want my share of changes, my share of ups and downs; I want a life that ranges from crosses up to crowns.
BEAUTIFUL THINGS
THE beautiful things are the things we do; they are not the things we wear, as we shall find when the journey’s through, and the roll call’s read up there. We’re illustrating the latest styles, with raiment that beats the band; but the beautiful things are the kindly smiles that go with the helping hand. We burden ourselves with gleaming gems, that neighbors may stop and stare; but the beautiful things are the diadems of stars that the righteous wear. There are beautiful things in the poor man’s cot, though empty the hearth and cold, if love and service are in each thought that husband and wife may hold. There are beautiful things in the lowest slum where wandering outcasts grope, when down to its depths they see you come with message of help and hope. The beautiful things that we mortals buy and flash in the crowded street, will all be junk when we come to die, and march to the judgment seat. When everything’s weighed on that fateful day, the lightest thing will be gold. There are beautiful things within reach today, but they are not bought or sold.
TRAVELERS
DOWN this little world we travel, headed for the land of Dawn, sawing wood and scratching gravel, here today, tomorrow gone! Down our path of doubts and dangers, we are toddling, mile on mile, transient and inquiring strangers, dumped into this world a while. Let us make the journey pleasant for the little time we stay; all we have is just the Present—all we need is just Today. Let’s encourage one another as we push along the road, saying to a jaded brother: “Here, I’ll help you with your load!” Banish scorn and vain reviling, banish useless tears and woe; let us do the journey smiling, all our hearts with love aglow. Let us never search for sorrow, since the journey is so brief; here today and gone tomorrow, what have we to do with grief? Down this little world we wander, strangers from some unknown spheres, headed for the country yonder where they have no sighs or tears; let us therefore cease complaining, let us be no longer glum; let us all go into training for the joyful life to come!
THE SHUT-IN