BE kind to your daddy, O gamboling youth; his feet are now sluggish and
cold; intent on your pleasures, you don’t see the truth, which is that
your dad’s growing old. Ah, once he could whip forty bushels of snakes,
but now he is spavined and lame; his joints are all rusty and tortured
with aches, and weary and worn is his frame. He toiled and he slaved
like a government mule to see that his kids had a chance; he fed them
and clothed them and sent them to school, rejoiced when he marked their
advance. The landscape is moist with the billows of sweat he cheerfully
shed as he toiled, to bring up his children and keep out of debt, and
see that the home kettle boiled. He dressed in old duds that his Mary
and Jake might bloom like the roses in June, and oft when you swallowed
your porterhouse steak, your daddy was chewing a prune. And now that
he’s worn by his burden of care, just show you are worth all he did;
look out for his comfort, and hand him his chair, and hang up his
slicker and lid.
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