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 mola.s.ses, 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 cuc.u.mber, 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 const.i.tution, 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 s.e.xtus 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.