Part 7
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 my breast, 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 come down 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!”
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 who calmly 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