``So, old gospel shark, they tell me I must die;
``That the wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut,
``Well, I will "pass in my checks" without a whimper or a cry,
``And die as I have lived--"a hard nut."=
This is no time-worn simile, no hackneyed illustration or bald-headed
decrepit comparison, but a new, fresh illustration that appeals to the
western character, and lifts the very soul out of the kinks, as it were.
"Wheels of life's wagon have rolled into their last rut."
Ah! how true to nature and yet how grand. How broad and sweeping. How
melodious and yet how real. Hone but the true poet would have thought to
compare the close of life to the sudden and unfortunate chuck of the off
hind wheel of a lumber wagon into a rut.
In fancy we can see it all. We hear the low, sad kerplunk of the wheel,
the loud burst of earnest, logical profanity, and then all is still.
How and then the swish of a mule's tail through the air, or the sigh of
the rawhide as it shimmers and hurtles through the silent air, and then
a calm falls upon the scene. Anon, the driver bangs the mule that is
ostensibly pulling his daylights out, but who is, in fact, humping up
like an angle worm, without pulling a pound.
Then the poet comes to the close of the cowboy's career in this style:
```"Do I repent?" No--of nothing present or past;
```So skip, old preach, on gospel pap I won't be fed;
```My breath comes hard; I--am going--but--I--am game to
`````the--last.
```And reckless of the future, as the present, the cowboy was
`````dead.=
If we could write poetry like that, do you think we would plod along
the dreary pathway of the journalist? Do you suppose that if we had the
heaven-born gift of song to such a degree that we could take hold of the
hearts of millions and warble two or three little ditties like that,
or write an effigy before breakfast, or construct an ionic, anapestic
twitter like the foregoing, that we would carry in our own coal, and
trim our own lamps, and wear a shirt two weeks at a time?
No, sir, he would hie us away to Europe or Salt Lake, and let our hair
grow long, and we would write some obituary truck that would make people
disgusted with life, and they would sigh for death that they might leave
their insurance and their obituaries to their survivors.