THIS DISMAL AGE
"It is a humdrum world," he said, "in which we now abide! alas! the good old times are dead when brave knights used to ride to war upon their armored steeds; then bloodshed was in style; then men could do heroic deeds, and life was worth the while. If I should go with lance and sword to enemy of mine--to one by whom I"ve long been bored, and cleave him to the chine, there"d be no plaudits long and loud, no wreaths from ladies pale; the cops would seek me in a crowd, and hustle me to jail. If down the highway I should press, beneath the summer skies, to rescue damsels in distress and wipe their weeping eyes, I"d win no praises from the sports; they"d call me a galoot; I"d have to answer in the courts to breach-of-promise suit. Adventure is a thing that"s dead, we"ve reached a low estate, and I was born, alas!" he said, "five hundred years too late."
He took the morning paper then, which reeked with thrilling things, with tales of fighting modern men; the strife of money kings; the eager, busy, human streams throughout this mundane hive; the struggle of the baseball teams, which for the pennant strive; the polar hero and his sled; the race of motor cars; the flight of aernauts o"erhead, outlined against the stars.
"It is a humdrum age," he sighed, "of avarice the fruit. Upon a steed I"d like to ride, and wear a cast iron suit, and live as lived the knights of old, the heroes of romance; I"d like to carry spurs of gold and wield a sword and lance; but in this drear and pallid age, from Denver to Des Moines, there"s naught to stir a n.o.ble rage--there"s nothing counts but coin!"
BOOST THINGS
Don"t sit supinely on your roost, but come along and help us boost, for better things of every kind, and leave your kicking clothes behind. O let us boost for better streets, and softer beds, and longer sheets; for smoother lawns and better lights, and shorter-winded blatherskites; for finer homes, and larger trees, for bats and boots and b.u.mble bees; for shorter hours and longer pay, and fewer thistles in our hay, for better grub, and bigger pies, for two more moons to light the skies.
And let the wolves of war be loosed on every man who doesn"t boost!
THE ADVENTURER
He had braved the hungry ocean when the same was in commotion, he had floated on the wreckage of his tempest-shattered bark; he had flirted in deep waters with the merman"s wives and daughters, he had sc.r.a.pped through seven sessions with a large man-eating shark.
He had roamed in regions polar, where there"s no effulgence solar, he had slain the festive walrus and the haughty arctic bear; and his watchword had been spoken in the wastes by whites unbroken, and he sh.e.l.led out many gumdrops to the natives living there.
In the jungles, dark and fearful, where the tiger, fat and cheerful, gnaws the bones of foreign hunters, he had gone, unscathed, his way; he had whipped a big constrictor, and emerged the smiling victor from a scrimmage with a hippo, which was fond of deadly fray.
He was shot with poisoned arrows and his tale of anguish harrows up the bosom of the reader, but he lived to journey home; he was chased by wolves in Russia, thrown in prison cell in Prussia, and was captured by fierce bandits in the neighborhood of Rome. He had lived where dwells the savage whose ambition is to ravage and to fill his cozy wigwam with a handsome line of scalps; he had lived with desert races, sought the strange and distant places, he had stood upon the summit of the loftiest of Alps.
To his home at last returning, filled with sentimental yearning, "Now,"
he cried, "farewell to danger--I have left its stormy track!" Far from scenes of strife and riot he desired long years of quiet, but a casting from an airship fell three miles and broke his back.
THEY ALL COME BACK
The stars will come back to the azure vault when the clouds are all blown away; and the sun will come back when the night is done, and give us another day; the cows will come back from the meadows lush, and the birds to their trysting tree, but the money I paid to a mining shark will never come back to me! The leaves will come back to the naked boughs, the flowers to the frosty brae; the spring will come back like a blooming bride, and the breezes that blow in May; and joy will come back to the stricken heart, and laughter and hope and glee, but the money I blew for some mining stock will never come back to me!
HOME BUILDERS
Old Bullion has a stack of rich things in his shack; of Persian rugs and antique jugs and costly bric-a-brac. There"s art work in the hall, fine paintings on the wall; and yet a gloom as of the tomb is hanging over all. Here costly books abound. "This cost a thousand pound; that trade-mark blur means Elzivir--I"ve nothing cheap around. Here"s Venus in the foam; the statue came from Rome; I bought the best the world possessed when I built up this home." Thus proudly Bullion talks, as through his home he walks, and tells the cost of things embossed, of vases, screens and crocks. No children"s laughter rings, among those costly things; no sounds of play by night or day; no happy housewife sings. For romping girl or boy might easily destroy a priceless jug, or stain a rug, and ruin Bullion"s joy. The guests of Bullion yawn, impatient to be gone, afraid they"ll mar some lacquered jar, or tread some fan upon.
Down here where Tiller dwells you hear triumphant yells of girls and boys who play with toys, with hoops and horns and bells. There are no costly screens; no relics of dead queens; but on the stand, close to your hand, cheap books and magazines. There"s no Egyptian crock, or painted jabberwock, but by the wall there stands a tall and loud six-dollar clock. Old Tiller can"t impart much lore concerning art, or tell the price of virtu nice until he breaks your heart. But in his home abide those joys which seem denied to stately halls upon whose walls are works of pomp and pride. That pomp which smothers joy, and chills a girl or boy, may have and hold the hue of gold, but it has base alloy.
FAILURE AND SUCCESS
He was selling tacks and turnips in a gloomy corner store, and he never washed his windows and he never swept the floor, and he let the cobwebs gather on the ceiling and the walls, and he let his whiskers flourish till they brushed his overalls. So his customers forsook him--for his patrons were not chumps--and the sheriff came and got him and that merchant b.u.mped the b.u.mps.
He was selling hens and hammocks, as he"d done since days of youth, and he queered himself with many, for he never told the truth. Oh, he thought it rather cunning if he sold a rooster old as a young and tender pullet through the artful lies he told; and he"d sell a shoddy hammock as a thing of silken thread, and the customer would bust it and fall out upon his head; so his customers forsook him, and he sadly watched them flit, and the sheriff came and got him, and that merchant hit the grit.
He was selling shoes and sugar--sugar from the sunny South--and he"d roast the opposition when he should have shut his mouth. He would stand and rant and rumble by the hour of Mr. Tweet, who was selling shoes and sugar in the shack across the street; and he"d vow all kinds of vengeance, and he"d tell all kinds of tales, till his wearied patrons sometimes rose and smote him with his scales; for they cared about his troubles and his sorrows not three whoops, and the sheriff came and got him, and that merchant looped the loops.
He was selling books and beeswax, and his store was neat and clean, and the place was bright and cheerful, and the atmosphere serene. He was tidy in his person, and his clerks were much the same, and no precious time was wasted, in the tiresome knocking game. And the customer who entered was with courtesy received, and he felt quite proud and happy when of cash he was relieved. And the merchant"s word was golden, what he said was always true, and he sold no moldy beeswax, saying it was good as new. And his trade kept on increasing till his bank account was fat, and the sheriff, when he met him, always bowed and tipped his hat.
THE OPEN ROAD
Romance
To walk again the open road I have a springtime longing; I yearn to leave my town abode, the jostling and the thronging, and tread again the quiet lanes, among the woodland creatures; where birds are singing joyous strains to beat the music teachers. Afar from honks of motor cars, and all the city"s clamor, I"d like to sleep beneath the stars, and feel no katzenjammer when in the vernal dawn I wake, as chipper as the foxes, to eat my frugal oatmeal cake put up in paper boxes. I fain would revel in the breeze that blows across the clover, and drink from brooks, with stately trees, like Druids, bending over. I"d leave the pavement and the wall, the too persistent neighbor, and hear the rooster"s early call that wakes the world to labor. I"d seek the hayfields whose perfume the jaded heart doth nourish, I"d go where wayside roses bloom and johnny-jump-ups flourish. I"d see the pasture flecked with sheep and mule and colt and heifer, and let my spirit lie asleep upon the twilight zephyr. Oh, town, I leave you for a week, your burdens and your duties! The country calls me--I must seek its glories and its beauties!
Reality
Gee whiz! I"d give a million bones to be back home a-sleeping! My shoes are full of burs and stones, and I am tired of weeping. Last night I sought a stack of hay, where slumber"s fetters bound me, and at the cold, bleak break of day a husky farmer found me. I tried to pacify his nibs when he stood there and blessed me; alas, his pitchfork smote my ribs, his cowhide shoes caressed me. The dogs throughout this countryside all seem to think they need me; they"ve gathered samples of my hide, and many times they"ve treed me. And when I roamed the woodland path to see the wild-flowers" tinting, a bull pursued me in its wrath and broke all records sprinting. At noontide I sat down to rest, and rose depressed and dizzy; I"d sat upon a hornet"s nest, and all the birds got busy. My whiskers now are full of hay, my legs are lame and weary; it"s been a-raining every day, and all the world is dreary. The road will do for those who like a pathway rough and gritty; I"ve had enough--just watch me hike back to the good old city.
THE MILLIONAIRES
They like to make the people think that all their piles of yellow c.h.i.n.k, are weary burdens, to be borne, with eyes that weep and hearts that mourn; but as you jog along the road, you see no millionaires unload. They like to talk and drone and drool, to growing youths in Sunday school, and tell them that the poor man"s lot is just the thing that hits the spot; to warn them of ambition"s goad--they talk, and talk, but don"t unload. They like to talk of days long gone, when life for them was at its dawn, and they were poor and bent with toil, and drew their living from the soil, and lived in some obscure abode--and so they dream, but don"t unload. They like to take a check in hand, and, headed by the village band, present it to some charity--"twould mean five cents to you or me; then they"re embalmed in song and ode; they smirk and smile, but don"t unload.
LITTLE MISTAKES
I used to trade at Grocer Gregg"s and paid him heaps of cash for flour and cheese and germ-proof eggs, and cans of succotash. But now he doesn"t get my trade--that"s why his bosom aches; I had to quit him, for he made so many small mistakes.
He"d send me stale and wilted greens when I had ordered fresh; he"s send me gutta percha beans, all string and little flesh. And when I journeyed to his store to read the riot act, three score apologies or more he"d offer for the fact. That doggone clerk of his, he"d say, had got the order wrong; and always, in the same old way, he"d sing the same old song. He seemed to think apologies were all I should desire, when he had sent me moldy cheese or herrings made of wire.
And when his bill came in, by jings, it always made me hot; he"d have me charged with divers things I knew I never bought. Then I would call on Grocer Gregg in wrath and discontent, and seize him firmly by the leg and ask him what he meant. Then grief was in the grocer"s looks, frowns came, his eyes betwixt; "The idiot who keeps my books," he"d say, "has got things mixed. I wouldn"t have such breaks as these for forty million yen; I offer my apologies and hope you"ll come again."
He"d often send the things I bought to Colonel Jones, up town, and I would get a bunch of rot that should have gone to Brown. And oft at home I"d wait and wait, in vain for Sweitzer cheese; instead of that I"d get a crate of codfish, prunes or peas. And then I"d go to Grocer Gregg, and mutter as I went; "I"ll take that merchant down a peg, and in him make a dent." He"d spring the same old plat.i.tudes when I had reached his den: "That vampire who delivers goods has balled things up again."
Apologies are good enough, excuses are the same; but forty-seven are enough to tire one of that game. It"s better far to shun mistakes, and do things right at first, than to explain your dizzy breaks till your suspenders burst.
EASY MORALITY