This is the burden of my rhyme: Be nice and pleasant all the time.
Some men are only sweet and nice, when they desire to get the price.
The lumber men at Bungtown hear that I intend, some time this year, to
build a handsome Gothic shed, all up to date and painted red.
At ordinary times these gents don’t smile at me worth twenty cents.
They pass me by and do not say, “How is your liver?” or “Good day!” But
since they’ve heard that I expect to build a shed that’s all correct,
a modern shed with wooden doors and handsome knotholes in the floors,
they’re so polite and smooth and sweet, they give me fantods in my feet.
They do not win me with their grins; such work is coarse, and seldom
wins. If men would sell their laths and lime, they should be pleasant
all the time, and not, like some cheap candidate, just when they think
’twill pay the freight.
I’ll buy the lumber for my shed, when I have got the coin ahead, from
dealers who are pleasant lads e’en when they are not after scads. There
are such dealers in our town, and no sane man would turn them down. I
meet them nearly every day, and talk with them of hogs and hay, and
bats and cats and curleycues, and ships and synagogues and shoes.
They do not seem to care a red who sells the lumber for my shed;
they’re always pleasant and polite, they hand me smiles and treat me
right.
So when I wish to buy a plank, I take some pennies from the bank, and
cheerfully I blow the price with men who can’t help being nice.
And when the Bungtown fellows know what I have done, they’ll droop
in woe; they’ll look on me with moody scorn, and wish I never had
been born. Their souls can’t reach the heights sublime; they can’t be
pleasant all the time.