Chapter 4

I told him they were merely autos whose drivers lived up to their mottoes that speed laws are in vain; and other miracles amazing with delicate and pointed phrasing I started to explain. I told of triumphs most astounding, of things which should be quite confounding to resurrected men; but in the middle of my soaring I heard old Thomas Tinkle snoring--he'd gone to sleep again.

IN HORSELAND

A well-fed horse drove into town, behind a span of ancient men, whose knees were sore from falling down and striving to get up again; their poor old ribs were bare of meat, and they had sores upon their necks; there wasn't, on the village street, a tougher looking pair of wrecks. And so they shambled up the street, a spectre harnessed with a ghost; the horse descended from his seat, and left them standing by a post. And there they stood through half the night, and shook and shivered in the tugs, the while their master, in delight, was shaking dice with other plugs. And there they died, of grief and cold--no more they'll haul the heavy plow; their master said, when he was told: "They cost blamed little, anyhow!"

INAUGURATION DAY, 1913

Now Washington is swarming with men of sterling worth, all bent upon reforming the heaven and the earth; they come from far Savannah, they come from Texarkana, and points in Indiana, with loud yet seemly mirth. They're come from far Alaska, where show is heaped on snow; they've journeyed from Nebraska where commoners do grow; the famed, the wise, the witty, the timid, and the gritty have come from Kansas City and also Broken Bow. Their battle shout is thrilling as they go marching by, and every man is willing at once to bleed and die; to guarantee this nation a fine Administration he'd take a situation or kill himself with pie. The editors of journals are marching in the throng; and old and war-worn colonels are teetering along; and friends of Andrew Jackson and Jefferson, now waxin' a trifle old, are taxin' their dusty throats with song. No wonder Woodrow Wilson, as this great crowd appears, his silken kerchief spills on some proud and grateful tears; the ranks of colonels face him--such loyalty must brace him, and from dejection chase him in future pregnant years. No office need go begging before this mighty host; he need not go a-legging for masters of the post; he has to do no pleading; they bring the help he's needing; of dying and of bleeding they make a modest boast. And so he views the strangers from Maryland and Maine, the tall, bewhiskered grangers who till the Western plain; the men from desks and foyers, the sheepmen and the sawyers, the lumberjacks and lawyers, all come to ease the strain; he views the dusty millers from Minnesota land; the shining social pillars from Boston's sacred strand; the men of hill and valley around his standard rally (and on the snaps keep tally), each with a helping hand. "My fears are in the distance," is Woodrow's grateful song; "what foe can make resistance against this mighty throng? So let us, lawyer, farmer, ex-plute, and social charmer, gird on our snow-white armor, and paralyze each wrong!"

PRAYER OF THE HEATHEN

Before a wooden idol two heathen knelt and prayed; it was their day of bridal, the savage and the maid. "We two have come together, to journey through the years, in calm and stormy weather, in sunshine and in tears. O idol most exalted, protect us on our way, and may our feet be halted from going far astray. This maid," the bridegroom muttered, "is fresh from Nature's hands; her boudoir is not cluttered with strings and pins and bands; she does not paint her features, or wear rings on her paws; she's one of Nature's creatures, and lives by Nature's laws. Her foot, she does not force it into a misfit shoe; nor does she wear a corset to squeeze her frame in two. That frame has got upon it no clothes she does not need; she wears no bughouse bonnet that makes man's bosom bleed. This maid, this weaker vessel, has movements swift and free, and she can run and wrestle, and she can climb a tree. And it she shows a yearning to emulate the whites, our good old customs spurning, pursuing vain delights, O idol stern and oaken, take thou thy sceptre dread, and may the same be broken upon her silly head."

"This bridegroom," said the maiden, "untutored is and rude, but still he is not laden with habits vain and lewd. I hope to see him trundle each evening to his kraal, and not blow in his bundle for long cold pints of ale. With my consent he'll never get next the slot machine, or use his best endeavor to burn up gasoline. No tailor hath arrayed him, no valet hath defaced! He stands as Nature made him, broad-chested, slim of waist! And he can swim the Niger, or rob a lion's lair, or whip a full-grown tiger at Reno or elsewhere! And if he would abandon our simple heathen ways, and learn to place his hand on some foolish white men's craze, O idol, in your dudgeon, obey his bride's behest! Take up your big spiked bludgeon, and swat him galley-west!"

THEORY AND PRACTICE

In public I talk of Milton and give him ecstatic praise, and say that I love to ponder for hours o'er his living lays; I speak of his noble epic, that jewel which proudly shines, and quote from his splendid sonnets (I know maybe twenty lines); but when I am home John Milton is left on the bookcase shelf; he's rather too dull for reading--you know how it is yourself; to lighten the weight of sorrow that over my spirit hangs, I dig up the works of Irwin or Nesbit or Kendrick Bangs.

I talk much of Thomas Hardy when I'm with the cultured crowd, and say that few modern writers so richly have been endowed; I speak of his subtle treatment of life and its grim distress, and quote from "The Trumpet Major" or spiel a few lines from "Tess." But when I am in my chamber, where no one can see me read, remote from the highbrow people and all that the highbrows need, I never have known a longing to reach for the Hardy tomes; I put in a joyous evening with Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

I talk a good deal of Wagner in parlor and drawing room, and speak of the gorgeous fabrics he wove on his wondrous loom, the fabrics of sound and beauty, the wonderful scroll of tone, and say that this mighty genius remains in a class alone. I whistle "The Pilgrims' Chorus," and chortle of "Lohengrin," and say that all other music is merely a venial sin. But when at my own piano Susannah sits down to play, I beg her to cut out Wagner and shoo all his noise away. "I'm weary and worn and beaten; my spirits," I say, "are low; so give us some helpful music--a few bars of Jungle Joe!"

FOOL AND SAGE

The fool and his money are parted, not long did they stay in cahoots; but the fool is the cheeriest-hearted and gladdest of human galoots. His neighbor is better and wiser, six figures might tell what he's worth; but O how folks wish the old miser would fall off the edge of the earth!

THEN AND NOW

In olden times the gifted bard found life a pathway rough and hard. Starvation often was his goad, and some dark garret his abode, and there, when nights were long and chill, he sadly plied his creaking quill. He wrote of shepherds and their crooks, of verdant vales and babbling brooks, displaying artfully his lore--while bailiffs threatened at the door. And having wrought his best, he took with trembling hands his little book to lay before some haughty lord, and cringe around for a reward. Some times, perchance, he got a purse; anon he only drew a curse; and often in a prison yard the weary, debt-incumbered bard was herded with the squalid throng, and damned the shining peaks of song.

The world moves on. The bard today finds life a soft and easy way. If he elects to cut his hair he has the price and some to spare. Attired in purple, he goes by with hard boiled shirt and scrambled tie, and you can hear his bullion clank as he goes prancing to the bank. He writes no tame, insipid books of dairy maids or shepherds' crooks, of singing birds or burbling streams, or any other worn-out themes. Anon he touches up his lyre to boost a patent rubber tire, or sings a noble song that thrills concerning someone's beeswax pills. His lyre's a wonder to behold; its frame is pearl, its strings are gold. His sheetiron laurels never fade; the grocer's glad to get his trade. While he can make the muses sweat he'll never go to jail for debt.

He calmly puts his harp away, when he has toiled a 10-hour day, and softly sighs: "There's nothing wrong with this old graft of deathless song!"

THE SLEEPER

They have planted him deep in a grave by the fence, where the sand burs are thick and the jimson is dense; he's sleeping at last, and as still as a mouse, held down by a boulder as big as a house, and the whangdoodle mourns in a neighboring tree, with a voice that's as sad as the sorrowing sea. They have planted him deep in the silt and the sand, with appropriate airs by the fife and drum band, and they joyfully yell when the sad rites are o'er: "Gosh ding him, he's taking his straw votes no more."

FOOLING AROUND

Old Griggins the grocer, has gone to the dump, and people who knew him say he was a chump; his prospects were fine when he opened his store, and customers brought him their bullion and ore, and bought his potatoes and pumpkins and peas, his milk and molasses, his chicory, cheese. But soon they went elsewhere to blow in their plunks, for Griggins turned out such a foolish old hunks; while others were rustling for shilling and pound, old Griggins the grocer kept fooling around.

He stood in the alley and ranted and tore, debating the tariff with some one next door; he roasted the tariff on spigots and spoons while customers waited to purchase some prunes; he argued that congress is out for the pelf, and left his trade palace to wait on itself. And patrons got huffy, their molars they ground, while Griggins the grocer was fooling around.

Old Griggins kept cases on sprinters and pugs, and talked of their records, while people with jugs were wishing he'd fill them with syrup or oil, and cut out his yarns, which were starting to spoil; he'd talk about Jeffries or Johnsing or Gotch for forty-five minutes or more by the watch, while customers jingled their coin in his store, and waited and waited, and sweated and swore. At last they would leave his old joint on the bound, while Griggins the grocer was fooling around.

The man who would win in these strenuous days must tend to his knitting in forty-five ways, be eager and hustling, with vim all athrob, his mind not afield, but intent on his job. The sheriff will come with his horse and his hound to talk with the man who keeps fooling around.

GUESS WHO!

He is the press and the people, the sultan who rules the Turks; he is the bell in the steeple, and he is the whole blamed works. He is the hill and valley, the dawning, the dusk, the moon; he is the large white alley, he is the man in the moon. He is the soothing slumber, he is the soul awake, he is the big cucumber, that gives us the bellyache. He is the fire that quickens, the company that insures; he is the ill that sickens, and he is the thing that cures. He is the ruling Russian, and we are the groveling skates; he is the constitution, and he's the United States.

TRYING AGAIN

No boarding house, tavern or inn was in sight; so into a cavern went Bruce, in sore plight. By enemies hunted, a price on his head, and all his schemes shunted, he wished he was dead. "In vain my endeavor, repulsed my demands; I'll try again never--I throw up my hands!" And so he lay sighing and cussing his fate, and wished he was lying stone dead in a crate. A spider was spinning its web by the wall; now losing, now winning, now taking a fall; though often it tumbled, it breathed not a sob, nor crawfished nor grumbled, but stuck to its job. Then Bruce opened wider his eyes and exclaimed: "That dodgasted spider has made me ashamed! I'm but a four-flusher to sit here and whine! This morning must usher in triumphs of mine!"

He canned all his wailing and cut out the frown, and went forth a-smiling, and won a large crown!

And legions of fellows with tears in their eyes, who wear out their bellows with groaning and sighs, who think they are goners, ordained to the dump, would harvest some honors if they would just hump! The spiders are teaching, the same as of old; the spiders are preaching a gospel of gold: "Though baffled and broken, O children of men, let grief be unspoken--go at it again!"

ICONOCLASM

King Skeptic wears his modern crown, his stern, destructive law prevails; he's tearing all our idols down, disproving all our fav'rite tales. Is there a legend you hold dear, some legend of the long ago? King Skeptic hears it with a sneer, and digs up history to show that things of that sort never chanced, and never could, and never will. "We have," he says, "so much advanced, that fairy tales don't fill the bill. No faked-up tales of knightly acts, no Robin Hood romance for me; the only things worth while are Facts, Statistics, and the Rule of Three."

With diagrams he shows full well that old-time tales are things to scorn; that such a man as William Tell, in liklihood, was never born. If Gessler lived and had a hat, he didn't hang it on a pole; the rules of Euclid show us that--so goes King Skeptic's rigmarole. But, granting that he had a lid, and hung it on a pole awhile, and granting that the people did bow down to reverence that tile, this does not prove that William shot an apple through an apple's core, and so the anecdote is rot--don't let us hear it any more.

One-eyed Horatius never held the bridge beside his comrades bold, while Sextus and his foemen yelled--because there was no bridge to hold. With Fact King Skeptic pounds your head, and prods you with it to the hilt, and shows Horatius had been dead ten years before the bridge was built. "He fell not in the Tiber's foam, performed no feats of arms sublime. I know! The city clerk of Rome sent me the records of that time!"

Mazeppa's ride was all a joke, as all the statisticians know; the horse he rode was city broke, and stopped whene'er he whispered "whoa." Most luckily, the village vet wrote down the facts with rugged power; Mazeppa simply made a bet the horse could go three miles an hour; he wasn't strapped upon its back, no perils dire did him befall; he rode around a kite-shaped track, and lost his bet, and that was all.

And so it goes; you can't relate a legend of heroic acts but that the Skeptic then will state objections based on Deadly Facts. Romance is but a total loss, and all the joy of life departs; we've nothing left but Charlie Ross, and he'll turn up, to break our hearts.

GATHERING ROSES

I've gathered roses and the like, in many glad and golden Junes; but now, as down the world I hike, my weary hands are filled with prunes. I've gathered roses o'er and o'er, and some were white, and some were red; but when I took them to the store, the grocer wanted eggs instead. I gathered roses long ago, in other days, in other scenes; and people said: "You ought to go, and dig the weeds out of your beans." A million roses bloomed and died, a million more will die today; that man is wise who lets them slide, and gathers up the bales of hay.

THE FUTURE SPORT

The airship is a thing achieved; it has its rightful place, as well as any autocart that ever ran a race. The farmer, in the coming years, when eggs to town he brings, will flop along above the trees, upon his rusty wings. The doctor, when he has a call, from patients far or near, will quickly strap his pinions on, and hit the atmosphere. And airship racing then will be the sport to please the crowds; there'll be racecourses overhead, and grandstands in the clouds. The umpire, on his patent wings, will hover here and there; the fans, with rented parachutes, will prance along the air; the joyous shrieks of flying sports will keep the welkin hot, and soaring cops will blithely chase the scorching aeronaut. We'll soon be living overhead, our families and all; and then we'll only need the earth to land on when we fall.

TAKING ADVICE

A forty-foot constrictor once was swallowing a goat, and having lots of trouble, for the horns stuck in his throat. And then a warthog came along, and said: "Oh, foolish snake! To swallow all your victuals whole is surely a mistake. It puts your stomach out of plumb, your liver out of whack, and gives you all the symptoms in the latest almanac. If serpents for abundant health would have a fair renown, they'll chew a mouthful half an hour before they take it down. Eat slowly, with a tranquil mind and heart serene beneath, and always use a finger bowl, and always pick your teeth. I'm reading up Woods Hutchinson and Fletcher and those guys, and following the rules they make, which are extremely wise, and oh, it pains me to the quick, and jars my shrinking soul, to see a foolish snake like you absorbing dinners whole!"

The serpent got his dinner down, with whiskers, horns and feet, then slept three weeks; then looked around for something more to eat. And, having killed a jabberwock, and found it fat and nice, he thought he'd eat according to the warthog's sage advice.

Ah, never more that snake is seen upon his native heath! The little serpents tell the tale of how he starved to death!

Moral:

The counsel of the great may help the man next door, 'tis true, and yet turn out to be a frost when followed up by you.

POST-MORTEM INDUSTRY

You've heard of Richard Randle Rox? He died; they put him in a box, and lowered him into a grave, and said: "He'll surely now behave."

For years this fertile Richard penned books, rhymes and essays without end. His helpful, moral dope was seen in every uplift magazine, and people used to wonder how the wheels within that bulging brow produced such countless bales of thought, such wondrous wealth of tomyrot; and folks chewed cloves and cotton waste to try to take away the taste.

At last he died before his time--killed off by an ingrowing rhyme. The mourners laid him on his pall, his three assorted names and all, and said: "Doggone him! Now he'll stop this thing of writing helpful slop." He got the finest grave in town, and marble things to hold him down.

Long years have passed since R. R. Rox was placed in silver-mounted box; and does he rest in peace? Instead, he's working harder now he's dead. New books are coming from his pen until the chastened sons of men look round, their eyelids red with grief--look round, imploring for relief. "Is there no way," so wails the host, "to lay this Richard Randle's ghost?"

THE CONQUEROR

The pugilist, tall and majestic, and proud of his numerous scars, was telling of foreign, domestic, and all kinds of Homeric wars. His hearers were standing before him in attitudes speaking of awe, for what could they do but adore him, the man with the prognathous jaw?

"My make-up," he said, "rather queer is, I've never seen others that way; I simply don't know what a fear is; I really rejoice in the fray, I guess I'm the champion glarer, my glance seems to wilt all my foes; I've seen fellows crumple with terror before we had got down to blows. This made me so often the victor; no qualms in my bosom I feel; I don't fear a boa constrictor--my heart is an engine of steel."

And so of his feats superhuman he talked in a voice ringing loud, until a small, fiery-eyed woman came elbowing up through the crowd. Her voice, like her person, was spindling, but Hercules heard when she called: "Come home, now, and cut up some kindling, or I will be snatching you bald!" No more of his triumphs he lilted, like Spartacus spieling in Rome; the steel hearted warrior wilted, and followed his conquerer home.

THE TRUTHFUL MERCHANT

If Ananias lived today and ran the corner store, he couldn't keep the wolf away from his old creaking door. For men who spend their hard-earned rocks won't patronize the man who must forever, when he talks, make truth an also ran.

I bought a whole new suit of clothes from Bilks, across the street. He said to me: "Such rags as those just simply can't be beat. They ornament the clothier's trade, and eke the tailor's shears; they will not shrink, they will not fade, they'll last a hundred years. Go forth," said Bilks, "upon the street, in all your pomp and pride, and every pretty girl you meet will wish she was your bride."

So I went forth in brave array, the city's one best bet. There was a little shower that day, and I got slightly wet. And then the truth was driven in that my new rags were punk. Alas, my friends, it was a sin the way those trousers shrunk! The buttons from my waistcoat flew with dull and sickening crack; my coat soon changed from brown to blue and then split up the back.

Old Bilks gold-bricked me in that deal, but does his system pay? He'll never get another wheel from me till Judgment Day. The kopeck that you win by guile may swell your roll today, but in the clammy afterwhile it melts that roll away.

STANDING PAT

Your arguments for modern things with me cannot avail; my father reaped his grain by hand and thrashed it with a flail; then who am I to strike new paths and buy machinery? The methods good enough for dad are good enough for me! I want no hydrant by my house--such doodads I won't keep! My father drew the water from a well three furlongs deep, and skinned his hands and broke his back a-pulling at the rope, and methods that my father used will do for me, I hope! Don't talk of your electric light; a candle's all I need; my father always went to bed when 'twas too dark to read; I want no books or magazines to clutter up my shack; my father never read a thing but Johnson's almanac. A bathroom? Blowing wealth for that ridiculous appears; my father never used to bathe, and lived for ninety years. I care not for your "progress" talk, "reform" or other tricks; my father never used to vote or fuss with politics; he never cared three whoops in Troy which side should win or lose, and I'm content to go his gait, and wear my father's shoes.

THE OUTCAST

You ask me why I weep and moan, like some lost spirit in despair, and why I wonder [Transcriber's note: wander?] off alone, and paw the ground and tear my hair? You ask me why I pack this gun, all loaded up, prepared to shoot? Alas! my troubles have begun--the women folk are canning fruit! There is no place for me to eat, unless I eat upon the floor; and peelings get beneath my feet, and make me fall a block or more; the odors from the boiling jam, all day assail my weary snoot; you find me, then, the wreck I am--the women folk are canning fruit! O, they have peaches on the chairs, and moldy apples on the floor, and wormy plums upon the stairs, and piles of pears outside the door; and they are boiling pulp and juice, and you may hear them yell and hoot; a man's existence is the deuce--the women folk are canning fruit!

ODE TO KANSAS

Kansas: Where we've torn the shackles From the farmer's leg; Kansas: Where the hen that cackles, Always lays an egg; Where the cows are fairly achin' To go on with record breakin', And the hogs are raising bacon By the keg!

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS

It is good to watch dear father as he blithely skips along, on his face no sign of bother, on his lips a cheerful song; peeling spuds and scraping fishes, putting doilies on the chairs, sweeping floors and washing dishes, busy with his household cares. Now the kitchen fire is burning; to get supper he will start--mother soon will be returning from her labors in the mart.