When farmers bring their teams to town, and then drive home again,
their heavy wagons loaded down with boards and joists, why, then, it
is a sign that things are well, the goose is hanging high; and you may
safely dance and yell, for better times are nigh.
All farmers who are safe and sane like handsome cribs and barns, and
for old shacks that let in rain they do not give three darns; but
when the hogs are dying off, of cholera or mumps, the farmer, with
affliction filled, looks on the old shacks near, and says, “I can’t
afford to build until some other year.”
But when the hogs are feeling gay, and everything serene, and all the
oats and corn and hay present a healthy green, he hitches up old Kate
and Dick and journeys off to town, and then comes homeward pretty
quick, with lumber loaded down. And when I see the wagons drill along
the country road, each one a-creaking, loud and shrill, beneath its
lumber load, I know the country’s on the boom, and things will hum once
more; and any man who talks of gloom is just a misfit bore.
Some people read the Wall Street news to see which way we head, and
some keep tab on Henry Clews, to see if we are dead; some follow up
what Congress does, and think therein they’ll find the signs that
business will buzz, or maybe fall behind. And some are making frequent
notes upon the tariff law, to see if it will get our goats, and
dislocate our jaw.
But when I want to know the truth, about our future fate, I pass up all
such things, forsooth, and sit on my front gate, and watch the farmers
going by, upon their way from town, and if with lumber piled up high,
their carts are loaded down, I know prosperity’s on top, good times are
here, you bet; and I go forth and whip a cop and chase a suffragette.
Oh, when the farmers spend their hoards for lumber, we enthuse; the
granger’s wagonload of boards tells more than Henry Clews.