THERE’S trouble in store for the gent who never salts down a red cent,
who looks upon cash as the veriest trash, for foolish extravagance
meant. Since money comes easy today, he thinks ’twill be always that
way, and he burns up the scads with the rollicking lads and warbles a
madrigal gay. His dollars are drawn when they’re due; and rather than
salt down a few, he throws them, with jests, at the robin red breasts,
with riotous hullabaloo. I look down the scurrying years—for I’m the
descendant of seers—and the spendthrift descry when his youth is gone
by, an object of pity and tears. I see him parading the street, on weary
and ring-boney feet, a-begging for dimes, for the sake of old times, to
buy him some sauerkraut to eat. I see him abandoned and sick, his pillow
a dornick or brick; and the peeler comes by with a vulcanized eye and
swats him for luck with a stick. I see him when dying; he groans, but
his anguish for nothing atones! And they cart him away in the dawn cold
and gray, to the place where they bury cheap bones. Don’t burn up your
money, my friend; don’t squander or foolishly lend; though you say it is
dross and regret not its loss, it’s a comfort and staff in the end.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------